It's been hard to leave the colonies untouched for so long but the queens have to be left undisturbed for at least three weeks. We've had some perfect weather for them to perform their mating flights recently so hopefully they should be busy laying eggs now..
First Hive:
Good sign here in the brood frames - loads of pollen, fabulous colours this time of year too. Bees need the high-protein pollen (which has a proportinally higher protein value than beef) to feed the brood. Lots of pollen means they're preparing for lots of brood, I hope.
Sure enough, here on the next frame, a perfect comb filled with freshly-laid eggs. A closer view here:
Each cell has one tiny egg standing up in it. They're not easy to see unless the light and angle are just right. There's no way of knowing if these eggs are fertile yet (infertile eggs produce drones, the male bees; an egg has to be fertilised to be female) so there's nothing more to look for in this hive..
Second Hive:
The bees were noticeably calmer in this hive, very relaxed and completely ignoring us.
It was a real surprise to see this on the frame - three cells sealed already, which means the egg must have been laid in it about a week ago!
Sure enough, these cells are surrounded by well-developed larvae and they're definitely female worker brood from fertile eggs too (drone cells are much larger and stick up more). This is just exactly what we have been hoping for. We were ready to close up again but just had a quick scan through the rest of the frames to see if there was anything unusual.
The very next frame had the queen on it. As she is a proven fertile queen we decided to take the opportunity to mark her. She was fast but I managed to get the queen cage over her. I was holding her down (gently, of course!) but she squiggled around so much that the tiny dab of paint smudged all over her!
I quickly let her go before the paint had a chance to dry - she had paint all over her eyes and wings too. This is something the books say you must NEVER do, especially dangerous if it obstructs any tiny breathing holes in her abdomen. It will be so awful if I've just killed her by paint blob. I hope they'll be able to clean the paint off her ok, it is that non-toxic bee paint (smells like poster paint) so it may come off easily - I won't know what damage I've done now for another week at least!
