The Virgin Queen, Part 1

Today I set up a mating nuc.  Our association is making queen cells and virgin queens for the membership this year and my name has come up to get one of the virgin queens.  My nuc is in an 8 frame box because I didn't have any more 5 frame equipment laying around and not enough time to make any.  So it is a box with a couple frames of honey and pollen, a frame of brood (nothing younger than 3 days they might decided to turn into a queen of their own), a frame of drawn comb for when the queen is mated and starts laying, and some frames of foundation for them to have something to do when not taking care of brood or the queen.  This should be an interesting adventure.  More tomorrow when I get the queen.

Can't Keep a Girl Around

I am a little behind on the on-going story.  Looks like either I killed the queen during the March inspection or she just ran out of juice because the next time I was out there, a couple weeks later, I couldn't find a queen or any signs of one; no eggs, no larva, only some old, capped brood.  Bummer.  It was still too early in the year to get a decent local queen so I figured I would have to get a southern queen and then requeen that hive again in the summer.  I ended up not being able to find a queen quickly but found a guy close buy that was getting some packages so I ended up getting a couple of packages so I could also get my in-laws hive going again.  I installed the package and everything seemed ok.  The next day I went  the in-law's house to do theirs and as I am pulling the cork out of the queen cage I notice a bee gets out.  Oh no, this is a slightly different cage than the other packages I have gotten.  As I am there looking at it I wondered if the queen had gotten out.  Oh crap! Yes, there she goes flying right in front of me!  How stupid was that?  I try grabbing it out of the air as she slowly circled by but by the second time around she was out of reach.  What could I do?  I closed up the hive and headed home.

On the way home I start thinking, "did I do it the wrong way on the other hive also?"  The next weekend I went out and yep, no queen.  Darn it!  Well, at least there were more bees to get them through until I could find another queen. This year is getting expensive and no further along. After another couple of weeks I find a guy that was local that was supposedly raising queens but he didn't call me back.  Then I found out that my old mentor had some nucs for sale so I got a couple of them.  One I installed into the hive at the mountain.  That install seemed to go ok and just checking them recently they seem to be doing ok now.  When I looked in the  in-law's hive before installing the nuc I found the queen had actually come back to the hive and was laying.  Who would have thought?  So that nuc ended up in my back yard.  It is still in 5 frame equipment and will probably stay that way all summer.  With a little luck things are now on track.  I don't know that I will get any honey this year but at least if things go well from there out I should be in ok shape going into the winter.