New Royalty

On Monday, I ordered a couple of queens from Honeybee Genetics (popularly known around here as Taber's). A few other people joined the order, which saved on shipping. I asked for overnight shipping, and they don't kid around. Taber's ships on Wednesday, and the UPS man was at the door at 8:30 Thursday morning.


They come in an envelope.


With labels to entertain the UPS folk. This reminds me of when I mail ordered some ducklings. A box of peepers or envelope of queens must break the monotony of package sorting.


The Queen Battery. There was a lot of piping going on in there. Girls just want to fight it out.

I hadn't been expecting the package to arrive so early. In fact, I wasn't sure they'd be here this week. I was feeling wrung out from being sick the night before, and needed to gather my thoughts for a "Flowers for the Bees" talk at the beek meeting that I was volunteered me for (thanks, Joy :/ ). The queens spurred me to different actions, many of which I attempted to do at the same time.

The other queen-buyers were called, most of whom were already at work. So much for coordinating a mass delivery to Arcata. Good. Let them come to me.

Then out to the bee yard to set up some nucs. Remember what those are, or did I not mention them before? In sum, they are "nucleus hives": small hivelets set up for various purposes, including holding queens for future use.

First I checked Boudicca & Isolde's (RIP) combined hive, and found my latest home-grown Virgin Queen. She's rather dark, so I think daddy must have been a Russky. Into a nuc she went, along with some brood, food and bees. One of the new girls will go into her old hive. I think I'll name her Ivanova, after Babylon 5's second-in-command. I know it's not a forename, but I like it.

Then to Ekaterina's hermitage: I found her, too. That was good, because I didn't want to take frames from her without being certain she wasn't on them. She's looking good (for now, *knock wood*). She didn't have as much brood as I'd hoped for, but I managed to set up another nuc for New Queen #2.


Ekaterina is near the edge of the frame, all long and dark, and obviously adored by her people.

Perhaps a little more nuc material could come from Freyja... I found her, too, and managed to cage her while I riffled through her palace. She's a quick & clever one. She was also planning to swarm. I found a queen cell with a larva lying on a bed of royal jelly. I couldn't not let her live, so I pulled that frame for Nuc #2. Hopefully my little looting expedition opened up some space and helped Freyja to decide to stay.

My brain was swirling by this time. I needed lunch, and wound up fielding calls from a couple of beeks about their queens. And I had to make some syrup and pull together everything I needed to set up these nucs temporarily at my alternate bee yard at Holly & Harvey's place. Sofia is currently residing there, and I figured she'd have some brood for New Queen #2 (Svetlana, perhaps?).

I have plans to make some feeder boxes for my nucs, but that's next week's task. Unfortunately that means I didn't have them now. The nucs are 8 frames wide rather than 10. I figured I'd just set a 10-frame box on top, and block the gap with some scrap wood. But I was thinking sideways, and found I was not set up properly. So the nucs went without syrup until later, when I was able to jury-rig something.

Fortunately, Sofia was looking good, and was able to spare some brood, food and bees. That box went back home with me. This whole process took a lot longer than I expected, and I was feeling wrung out.

Now for installing some new queens.



I had held off opening the queen battery, because I knew it also held some loose attendant bees, and I didn't want them to get out too soon. I hadn't expected quite so many, though. You can barely see the queen cages under all the bees. A few attendants flew out, but they really are loyal to their queens. I was able to get a few of the escapees to march back into the battery when I laid it next to their little cluster. Sorry, no video. It is pretty nifty, though.


Here's Ivanova's cage, as she is introduced to her new home. There's a candy plug in the neck of the queen cage, and it ought to take the workers a few days to eat through it. This gives her time to waft her pheromones through the hive, so the workers will forget about their virgin queen, and accept the new regime. Svetlana was similarly installed, and then I was able to sit still for a little while.

On the way to the beek meeting, I took the feeder equipment over to the Harvey's, and forgot to take pictures.

I survived my little talk, but knew it was semi-crap. Hopefully everyone was too distracted by one beek's irrelevant questions to notice.

Four other queens were distributed last night, four to go. The queens are piping again this morning, looking for a royal dust-up.