A new owner has already been found for my two surplus nucs (technically, you can't 'own' bees as such, they're effectively wild insects, living in man-managed hives - they're free to leave at any time they choose, so legal ownership is a whole grey area!). They're coming to collect them this weekend, so I need to make sure that those queens are clearly marked today.
The swarm nuc first - I have great expectations of this colony - they've already entirely spread across the brood box and will need to be put in a full-size hive soon. I'd love to have kept this one, but just three colonies is our limit for now, due to the time it's been taking to manage all these recently.
It took a few minutes to find the queen, they're never easy to find when you need to!
By holding this queen cage over her, I guided her away from the brood onto the honey stores nearby. This queen cage is a ring with nails all around the outside, spaced so that she cannot get out. Once she was over the honey and there was no risk of damaging the brood with the nails, I pressed the cage down gently to hold her securely in place.
With her thorax positioned in the gaps between the cords, it was easy to dab a mark on her back. The international colour code for queens mated in 2010 is blue. This means that it will be clear just how old this queen is, no matter who is looking at her, wherever she ends up!
Once the paint was dried, I lifted up the cage and let her go - 'Blue 1', daughter of Charlotte.
This will make her far easier to spot now - even amongst a mass of bees, as shown in the photo above.
This second nuc next, N2.
Again, the queen was easy to find, then hold in place over the honey stores.
One quick dab later, she is clearly marked, and given the name 'Blue 2', daughter of Beatrix.
... then released to continue her duties. We noticed something very worrying in this colony as we inspected it - this queen's first brood was just hatching out (which means she was mated exactly 3 weeks ago) and we found two bees amongst them with deformed wings. This means that there is still a varroa infestation here - still a small one as yet, I believe, because otherwise the general health is excellent, but it means I can't let this colony be rehomed until I have completely cleared the infestation. I'll plan what to do later, but disappointingly it means that this colony definitely won't be fit for rehoming for a while now.
The new hive next - this is the new queen which we are keeping, in addition to our two existing colonies.
The empty super I added last week has no stores yet but they are building up the foundation wax well.
The 4 central frames are ready for use now and they have just started building up the next ones.
We found the queen after a few minutes and repeated the process as before.
We'll call her Dipsy (after the teasel flower, not just the Teletubby!), she's also a daughter of Charlotte, but hatched a few days later than Blue 1, who swarmed from the hive immediately upon hatching.
We had a lot of trouble getting the green paint to stick permanently to our queens last year so I'm using a different marking system this year - it's a permanent marking pen (also safe and non-toxic, of course) and has been recommended to me. It's certainly much easier to use and the blob I tested on the back of my glove wouldn't rub off!
Just one more job to do for now - I need to insert new bait comb into N1. It should contain a virgin queen now, but waiting for her to hatch meant that I was too late to remove the sealed brood before that hatched too.
There's still time to insert a new bait comb before the queen starts laying, so we selected one out of Bea's colony.
This one's ideal again - full of eggs and larvae on both sides.
N1 - there's still no point spending time looking for a new queen here. If there is no queen, they'll use some of these eggs to raise a new queen and if there is a queen, they'll just seal these eggs over as normal, like the bees did in the other nuc.
We'll remove this bait frame in ten days from now - by then any varroa mites here will be sealed inside the frame as well.
