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Pacific Northwest artist Michelle Anderst (the woman in the center in the top picture) has her show “Queen Cell” up at Mortlake & Company, down near Pioneer Square. I went to the opening night reception. Do catch the show if you get a chance, it’s up until the Equinox.
Her painting Phi is something I wish I could give my friend @calyxaomphalos. It has so many layers of symbolism that resonates with them, and would look utterly at home in their temple-office.
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Hive inspections 5/27
P: Same - all well, working, doing their things, but not expanding or making/finishing honey. Saw q1.
GBF: Slow to build and fill top boxes. Q cell in 2 but also eggs in decent pattern. Maybe they’re feeling crowded, but they need to build as they have plenty of space, just not comb. Left it alone - maybe they know better than me. 3 wall to wall brood in box 2, not much in box 3 but I couldn’t move a frame up to encourage without also encouraging “excess” brood there.
I used to/learned to always go for as large a population as possible, to make more honey and get through those long cold Illinois winters. I’m trying a different thing this year, hopefully more suited to this climate and turn of seasons, where I don’t do anything to try to get them to raise brood beyond the second deep/third medium. Smaller population but still sizeable, eats less through the dearth, doesn’t need to be huge with our mild winters anyway - so goes the theory. We’ll see.
I think I didn’t check the GF hives this day because I was going to be doing demos there that weekend and figured I’d open them then. It rained, so I couldn’t, and delayed inspecting them until June 8th.
Heh. Silly bees.
Though I attempted to curb my bees from swarming, I believe the inevitable occurred. While two weeks ago when I did a hive inspection, I saw the queen AND a queen cell (which i destroyed), this time, the laying pattern was spotty, there were fewer bees and all signs point to a queenless hive. It really made me regret naively destroying the capped queen cell from two weeks ago! Nevertheless, they created a new one, which is already capped. While I could order a mated queen from a few sellers yet, this is not a hive I was going to overwinter. With that said, it is highly unlikely that I will get any honey this year.
Here is what has happened and is in store for my Queen Bee (read more here): Egg - Hatches on Day 3
Larva - Day 3 to day 8 1/2
Queen Cell Capped - ~Day 71/2
Pupa - ~Day 8 until emergence
Emergence - ~Day 15 1/2 - Day 17
Mating Flight - ~Day 20-24
Egg Laying - ~Day 23 and up
With all of that time, about 2,000 workers die each day. I am not going to inspect this hive for two weeks or so to let everyone settle in. Should they need more workers, I hope to shake some in from my once weak hive and bolster this group up.
Supersedure Sci Fi on Flickr.
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New Start on Flickr.
Queen cell being placed into a mating nuc
Queen cell with additional cup decoration.
Supersedure Cell on Flickr.
"Supersedure is the process by which an old queen bee is replaced by a new queen. Supersedure may be initiated due to old age of a queen or a diseased or failing queen. As the queen ages her pheromone output diminishes. Supersedure may be forced by a beekeeper. For example, by clipping off one of the middle or posterior legs from the queen, she will be unable to properly place her eggs at the bottom of the brood cell. The workers will detect this and will then rear replacement queens. When a new queen is available, the workers will kill the reigning queen by "balling" her, colloquially known as "cuddle death": clustering tightly around her until she dies from overheating. This method is also used to kill large predatory wasps that enter the hive and may be used against a foreign queen attempting to take over an existing colony.[5] Balling is often a problem for beekeepers attempting to introduce a replacement queen. If a queen suddenly dies, the workers will flood several cells, where a larva has just emerged, with royal jelly. The young larva floats on the royal jelly. The worker bees then build a larger queen cell from the normal sized worker cell and it protrudes vertically from the face of the brood comb. Emergency queens are usually smaller and less prolific, and therefore not preferred by beekeepers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_bee
