Queen mating flight

[Cindi]

As I am sure many of us beekeepers do, we observe our hives.  I spend many hours during the summer, watching the hives, doing their thing.  Now I had something interesting happen that I was privy to seeing last summer.  I had made a few splits, giving them some capped queen cells.  One particular nuc I had placed inbetween two of my older colonies.  Very often I go and stand beside the hives and look down at them, watching the bees come to and fro.  This is a very pleasurable thing to do, and it is neat to look at the bees from this angle, they never bother me because I am beside them, looking down, they are so busy that they don't even know (care) that I am there.  I was looking down at this nuc colony and out of the corner of my eye, I saw something large coming in to the hive.  It was neat, it was the queen.  There were several bees outside on the front board, obviously awaiting her return.  She alighted on the board and went in immediately to her girls-in-waiting, they all followed her in.  I presume this was her mating flight, I understand the queen may also perform an orientation flight prior to the actual mating flight though, so it could be either of the two.  Something must have eventually happened to this poor queen though.  About 2 weeks later, I checked to see if she was laying, and she was. Very nicely.  But then a couple of weeks after that I was doing stuff with the colonies, and I checked this nuc.  They were not very happy, I could tell this, they were actually quite noisy, a different type of noisy.  She was not present, no idea what happened, but she plain and simply was not there.  So I united this little nuc with another colony and they carried on.  But going back, this was a very neat thing to see and I am grateful for my colonies that bring such interest into my life.  Great day.  Cindi