5/23I inspected the Italians today and was very surprised and a bit dismayed that the queen was still in her cage after 7 days. The cage had fallen down between the frames. I'm not sure whether the workers just couldn't get to the marshmallow with the cage knocked down or whether the marshmallow had hardened too much for them to eat through. Well, at least she is still alive! (I saw festooning-see previous post.)
Next, I performed the very nerve-wracking task of scraping out the marshmallow and releasing the queen into the hive. The last thing I wanted to happen was for her to fly away or to accidentally kill her. As I worked the cage, the bees noticeably began to buzz much louder. Curious. The attendants and the queen took their own sweet time exiting the cage. I tried to sear in my memory what the queen looks like (see picture from Internet), so maybe someday, I can actually locate her when inspecting. The one thing that I did notice is that she doesn't have a furry thorax and is lighter in color than the Russian queen. Master beekeepers can easily spot the one queen among the thousands and thousands of workers.
The queen scampered out of the cage and high-tailed it downward between frames C1 and C7 (the middle frames). So the Italians have their queen. She needs to start laying eggs very quickly, because with a 6 week life span, the workers installed on April 20 will soon be dying off in waves.
I lifted the lid of the Russians. They are drawing out the frames on the second floor but no eggs up there. I closed the hive up. No reason to tear their house down when they are doing so well.
Vaseline sticky sheets looked much better! Considerably fewer varroa mites.
Interesting fact: Honeybees pollinate 80% of our flowering crops which constitute 1/3 of everything we eat! Every year, 60% of the commercially kept honeybees in the United States--more than 1 million hives--are driven to the almond groves in California.
No comments:
Post a Comment