More on the Absconding Buckfasts

[Daddys Girl]

Thanks to the generosity of a local beek, we got the Buckfasts to stay home finally.  :)

So I dropped in the comb, left the bees to do bee things, swapped syrup cans on Sunday and found eggs.  Also found bridge comb between two frames at the edge of the hive.  No blue marked queen.  Working theory at the time, absent a queen herself, was that the package was shook with a queen in it, and the marked queen was killed upon release. 

Put it all back together and called eggs and organizaed bee activity a very good Mother's Day present, considering what I've been through.   :fishhit: 

Today I finally got a live replacement queen from Beeweaver(recieved a replacement on Friday that was DOA, while her attendants were fine) and decided to satisfy my curiosity about the working theory.   I pour over each frame to see what is happening.  Eggs, nectar and pollen stores greet me.  I smile.  My daughter, who holds the Epipen and the phone, smiles.  I find an unmarked, clipped queen with damaged wings in there.  Explains a lot about why I couldn't find the blue marked package queen!  But here she is:



See?  No blue dot!  I declare her popular enough to be Prom Queen.  Her wings are a little raggedy from all of this, but she is laying well and the hive is starting to really pull itself together.

Having physical proof of a laying queen, and the queen herself, I sent the live one on to live with another beek.  I'm not ready to try a funky split with this hive, and I couldn't let her die after everything we went through to assure this hive was queenright.

[DennisB]

Yea,

Hopefully everything will turn out just fine. She should be a good one if she is laying and everyone is happy.

Dennis