Queen or no queen? ... and comb repair
Very busy weekend of beekeeping! When inspecting the kenyan (with the new swarm) all we could find was honey, honey and more honey. We were of the belief that we might not have a queen. After much discussion, we actually got to the point of leaving some messages at places to buy a new queen. Fortunately, we have a new group of like minded individuals forming (there will be an upcoming post on that as well) that we were able to reach out to for advice.
It was Chris Inch (bees.chrisinch.com) that said to look very closely because he had seen people miss the eggs and the larvae. Not me! I took a good long look this morning, went through every bit of comb. Nothing. We definitely needed a new queen. Yep. A number of hours later, Erika (www.faceboook.com/bestforbees), one of our mentors offered to swing by and take a look. Have I mentioned my vision really isn't very good any more .... ? Sigh.
So yes, we have eggs and larvae. Erika's feelings were that it was likely a queen given the organization of the larvae. I guess we won't know for a bit, but we are hopeful.
Now, just when everything was going so well the very comb in the pictures above ... broke off. So tonight, once it had cooled, we opened up the hive once more with the intention of somehow reattaching it to a bar. It was the biggest of the combs and it had babies!
It seems to have gone well. Check out the hair clip method.
Comb is now re-attached and back in the hive. Bees are a little tense, but are still there. We will just have to wait and see ...