For those following our series of posts, we thought you’d be as excited as we were to see the queen. Thanks as ever to Lisa for some footage to share and I’ll do my best to explain exactly what the bees are up to, and why we might have a bit of trouble ahead, sadly!
Let’s remember that so far we have seen and shared:-
Video 1;
On 29th March they installed the apiary, some thing we attached in the post of that time.
Video 2; was one with some sad news about bee hive 1 on 25th April.
Video 3; 9th May we showed a solution to save our first hive which was in danger of being lost as there wasn’t a queen bee. So with the aid of newspaper, we were attempting a merge of hive 1 with hive 2.
Video 4; 16th May where we were able to see success in the merging of the hives.
Video 5; also 16th May – our slow motion special which focussed on the entrance to the hive
Video 6; 11 frames for the bees with a dummy board,
Video 7; the workers made it look amazing, stunning in fact, but the naughty workers moved the play area!
And here in video 8 we see something amazing, the queen in amongst many other bees.
Identifying the Queen Honey Bee
Size | she is the largest in the honey bee colony.
Abdomen | the abdomen is near the stinger
Legs | the difference between the queen’s legs and the workers is that they are positioned outward, making them more visible.
Stinger | the queen bees have an unbarbed, smooth stinger.
The queens mate with drones (male bees) on the wing high above the tree tops. Unfortunately that makes them vulnerable to predation by birds, or being unable to fly to mate because it raining and/or cold (less than 10C). Or being caught out whilst flying by down pours (wet and cold combined). It is a kin to hyperthermia for us i.e. too cold to operate!
Queens need to get mated within three weeks of emerging. May is a little early for swarming, June is the apex for swarming so there is a good portion of the summer available to get viable queens into the hives, like the one we see in the video.
In a nutshell the essence of beekeeping to assist the bees when things go against them.
So there’s more work for Lisa and David, The Bee Farmer, McDowell to do and they will have a watching brief for next week. It is surprising what can be achieved in a few weeks of stable weather. Things tend to work out., but we are hoping for great weather ahead of us.
Being the queen bee is fraught with danger, so fingers crossed we’ll see successes in our hives.
For those wanting to learn more about bees then don’t hesitate to contact David, The Bee Farmer, McDowell on the website link https://lnkd.in/eGD4fXrX or Co-Treetment on https://lnkd.in/eqa4BEbX
Remember ‘Bees Means Hives’ 😀
Simon Evans
Darrell Taylor
Keith Cox
David, The Bee Farmer, McDowell
