Salad Harvest - Sunday 19th April.
leaves - dittander / salad burnet / dandelion / mizuna / mibuna / tarragon / sculpit / mint / lettuce / mustard / pea shoots / ramsons / fennel / watercress / american land cress / dead nettle tops / corn salad / parsley / coriander
flowers - american land cress / primrose / calendula / wild garlic / ransoms / pea
+ radishes.
New Queen Cells - unsealed/estimated to be 7 days old (19/4/20 - Midday)
The discovery of numerous well developed drawn-out queen cells in 'Hive 2' in the apiary prompted me to perform an artificial swarm operation. This operation preempts the swarming of the bees in a controlled manner. A beekeeper separates the queen bee (that is preparing, or being prepared, to swarm) from the 'brood bees'.
A colony of honeybees could be seen as consisting of a queen bee, brood bees (worker bees), field bees (worker bees), and drones. The brood-bees, as I understand the swarming process, are those that collectively prepare to swarm. The brood bees might also be sub-divided into types according to various factors and functions. Among the brood bee types, there are 'nurse bees' that tend to and control the movement of the queen bee, according to various pheromones she/it emits. Other brood-bees build comb including queen cups - special honeycomb cells that are used to incubate new queens so the colony can reproduce itself. The nurse bees direct the queen bee to the queen cups, the queen bee lays eggs in them and other brood bees begin 'drawing out' the queen cups so they become queen cells in which new queen bees will develop. A colony swarms, usually, when one of the new queen cells is sealed. It takes about 7 to 8 days from the moment a queen lays an egg in a queen cup to that queen cup becoming a queen cell and being sealed - and triggering a swarm. A swarm will consist of the 'old queen bee' and up to half the bees of the colony; that leaves the hive to establish a new nesting site elsewhere. What remains is a temporarily queenless colony/hive - with gestating queen bee cells, field bees (workers) and brood bees (workers) and drones.
The artificial swarm operation involved moving the whole of Hive 2 to a new position in the apiary. A new hive, Hive 1, was then placed in the position Hive 2 was in. The next stage involved finding the queen bee in Hive 2. I had to go round the brood and a half of Hive 2 twice before I found the queen (pictured below). Having found the queen bee I separated her from the brood bees and placed her on a brood frame with open brood (taken from Hive 2). She was then placed in the centre of the new hive/brood box - along with two more brood frames taken from Hive 2 (both shaken free of brood/field bees).
The field bees that have flown out from Hive 2 to forage (prior to the artificial swarming) will now return to Hive 1 - that has the old/original queen. All being well, the bees in Hive 1 will lose the immediate impulse to swarm.
Hive 2, in a new position, has a brood and a half, with about 3 well formed, unsealed queen cells, lots of brood bees, fewer field bees and no queen bee. Because there is no queen bee, the colony should not swarm when the queen cells are capped. Next Saturday, (7 days) I will have to move Hive 2 again, to the other side of Hive 1. More about that later. I estimate the unsealed queen cells in Hive 2 are 7 days old:
Hive 2 - queen bee development/management?
Sunday 19th April (Day 7) leading to Tuesday 28th April (Day 16) - when a new queen bee emerges/hatches.
It is possible that around 28th April, the colony in Hive 2 could swarm with a virgin queen, the first to have emerged from the 3 queen cells I left in the brood boxes on the 19th April. I could preempt that by simultaneously artificially hatching the queen cells on Monday 27th April - the idea being the virgin queen bees would fight it out until one remains. That queen bee would probably start mating around Saturday 9th May (depending on the weather) and be fully mated and laying by Sunday 17th May. I could go back to Hive 2 this week (22/4/20) and remove all but one sealed queen cell. Last year I used the artificial hatching process and it worked.
'Old queen bee' trapped, still with some nurse bees in attendance. That queen bee was transferred to Hive 1.
Frame, with open brood, on which the 'old queen bee' was placed and put into the new, Hive 1.
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