Supersedure

Thursday afternoon - time to check out the hives at home. The Newark hive with our blue queen seemed to have settled down to raising brood but had no apparent inclination to make honey. Expecting a fairly routine inspection I was surprised to find queen cups- lots of them and 2 sealed! There were plenty of bees- they hadn't swarmed as you might expect if sealed queen cups are present- and there fairly easy to spot was the queen. Not sure what to do we quickly caught her in a match box and put her safely on one side while we considered what to do. It seemed obvious they were no longer happy with her and were trying to replace her- a process known as supersedure. So very carefully we went through the hive and selected a good queen cell to leave and knocked out all the others. In a few days we will repeat this to make sure they have not tried to make an emergency queen cell from some of the young eggs. The bees were remarkably good natured with us considering we were really having a good look at them. But when we put the hive back together lots of bees came out and hung on the outside of the hive as if to show they didn't quite appreciate the attention they had been given!

The bees eventually started to trickle back into the hive and by evening they were all back in. The next day they were going in and out as they had been previously. We can now only hope that the queen cell we left hatches and does her stuff. I am now really beginning to consider how different strains of bee exhibit different characteristics. Other bees make and store honey- mine just want to reproduce! As for Birgit, I'm afraid she was humanely dispatched, I'm not ashamed to say with a tear in the eye- I had become quite attached to her, but her time had come!