Tuesday, May 25, 2010

New queen for Schampel TBH

Got a queen from my friend Paul tonight. We were out at his apiary collecting some brood combs for a queen rearing box he's building. We found lots of capped queen cells in one of his hives. He took one off and handed it to me telling me "here's your queen!". He knew that I have a queenless colony. I could feel her moving around inside the cell. As I examined it closer I could see that she was chewing the cap off. I watched as she hatched out right in my hand. Way cool! We found an old queen cage lying around and placed her in it with a few worker bees. After finishing up at his place I drove to Shampel TBH and hanged her on an empty bar placing it between bars 2 and 3. I had used a marhmallow to plug the entrance to the queen cage hoping to keep her in for a while. I found 2 capped queen cells in this hive but left them there. She's a Minnesota Hygienic mix of some sort (just what she's mixed with - who knows). I'll check on her again in a few days to see if she's been released. Still a lot of capped brood and larva on these 6 bars of comb.

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