Native Queen Bees

The first queen from the grafts on 1st May has emerged in the incubator half a day early.

The queens from the first grafts carried out on 1st May should be emerging on Wednesday 13th May. The cells will be placed into Apideas with a cupful of bees tomorrow 12th May. Mating flights should take place from about 20th may onwards, weather permitting.
The next batch of grafted queens is due to emerge on 21st May.

I like to give mu colonies the chance to make natural comb so that they can decide the cell size and the number of drones they want.

Queenrearing can get underway when the drone rearing colonies have lots of these:

Irish bees working hard on a bright but cold St Pat’s Day.

I was able to have a very quick look at a few colonies in a spell of warmer weather at the weekend and all had some worker brood.
A colony with a queen entering her 4th season had a decent patch of worker brood so it is nice to see that some queens are still surviving to a decent age in spite of the queen longevity problems being widely reported. This queen was a late September supersedure in 2012.

I checked a few of my overwintered apideas this morning and was pleased to see a queen on a frame of freshly laid eggs in one of them. Good to get the new season underway.

Nice to see some fresh pollen coming in.
The colonies are building up nicely and the bees appear to have overwintered well.

Orders have started for 2015 and I will be posting queens on a first come first served basis.
The easiest way to order is via paypal.