Lots of Princesses. Who Wants to Be a Real Queen?

As I recently mentioned, this has been a difficult year for queens. I'm not the only one in the area. We had a long cold winter that only now seems to be abating - and here it is nearly Midsummer!

In the last few weeks, I've had a number of young queens hatch out. I prefer to call them princesses, until they prove themselves in the brood nest. Last week, two were laying; this week I'll see if their volume and quality are up to snuff.

I decided to buy another queen, just in case. She arrived last Thursday, and I installed her in a hive that I thought was queenless and queen cell-less. The next day, the workers exhibited pre-swarm behavior, e.g. loitering on the landing board in large numbers. This told me that there might be another queen in there. I took the hive apart, and began shaking off frames. Soon I found a rather plump princess and many queen cells. I'm not sure how I could have missed all those the week before, unless there was an older queen who was laying only a few eggs that the workers turned into baby queens. So that hive got split, with the plump princess in one and the bought queen in the other. That's eight hives right now. Yikes!

Of course, I forgot to mark the plump surprise princess when I had her within my grasp. Hopefully she'll be easy to find next time. But yesterday I found and marked two more: one was December's wild queen Grainne (who currently has two daughters in finishing school), and the other is another princess who just started laying. This princess needs some experience - she's often laying two and three eggs in one cell. If she keeps that up, or winds up making mostly drones, she'll go the way of Anne Boleyn and Mary Stewart. But considering she's only just started her career, I'll cut her some slack for a week or so. I hope she makes it - she's a third generation Myrtletown queen, and the last of her line. I'd love to have all local queens that are better adapted to our coastal climate.

16 June P.S. The queen in the hive over at the Harveys' looks to be a keeper! She's a second generation California Street queen, daughter of Athena, granddaughter of Sofia. In honor of her location, I have named her Califa.