Queenless

Hives record updated.

8 days since my last inspection, when I split Amidala and created Cleopatra, I went back to look at my first 2 hives. Amidala now seems queenless: no eggs and 4 sealed queen cells. Sealed! They must have started these the second I closed the hive last time. What happened to the wonderful old queen I cannot say. I did see eggs there last time (though not many) despite not having seen the queen for a while. 3 of the queen cells are on the bottom of the drawn bit of comb towards the bottom of a deep frame. These cells looked good (in the way that queen cells can). The other was on a different frame near the top of a face - more of an "emergency queen cell" type affair. I'm at a loss to know what might have happened. This colony has accumulated no more honey since last time, but then I did steal a large number of their population last time to make a new hive. And when did the queen go? Swarmed? Killed? I'm struggling to see the learning point for my beekeeping here, except that I need to build up more experience, speak with more beekeepers, and keep vigilant with regular inspections. I left all 4 queen cells. Should I have bumped a few off? I don't know, but I felt better to let nature takes its course in this case. I'm looking forward to a new queen coming on stream, which might be 20 days from now (6th June) give or take a few days. I'm not sure when I should inspect next - I don't want to be dabbling whilst a mated queen is returning.

Hive Boudicca seemed quite perky, bad tempered blighters though they are. I saw no queen cells in there (I saw eggs but did not spot the queen). There were lots of sealed drone brood cells at the bottom of the frames and I ripped a lot of these off and discarded them to keep the varroa down. Having said that, I did not see many mites in there. They've definitely got more focused on stashing honey away - the super is now 2 thirds full.

That's it for now. It all seemed so much easier last year when I caught a few swarms and knocked up a few flat-packed hives. Real beekeeping seems a little more fraught with uncertainty and the vagaries of nature.