Last week I did a demaree on another hive. I put a single frame of mostly sealed brood, along with the queen, in a brood box of mostly foundation, put an excluder on it, then an empty super, then a crown board, then the main brood box, followed by a super.
4 days later I opened them up to deal with the inevitable queen cells and blow me if there aren't (as well as half a dozen queen cells in the upper brood) two sealed queen cells in the top super! When I removed them they were occupied with part developed queens. Her majesty hasn't had access to the super since March, so how the hell did those get there?
It's been bothering me ever since, and I've just remembered what happened.......
When I put the whole thing back together, I was (for whatever reason, can't quite remember) one super frame short (probably due to a mix of castellated and railed supers). So I put one in that had been kicking around the shed. It had been in a 'bottom super' of a brood and a half over the winter, and must have had some eggs in it. The bees have spotted the eggs, and raised 2 queen cells from them.
So know I know - bee eggs taken out of the hive, left for two months then put back are still viable.
No comments:
Post a Comment