Musings of an Unseasoned Beeman

Last we left it, we had installed the new queen, and I had seen the queen released, and – oddly enough – a few full frames of capped brood.  That was about 2 weeks ago.

So, what does that mean?  At some point I had a good laying queen.  Was it my new one, or one that the bees themselves came up with?  On top of that, there were no eggs  nor larvae in the hive.  Thus, while I had a queen, it was pretty obvious that I no longer had a queen, or if I did, she was on vacation or just tired of laying eggs for the hive.

So, I wasn’t too optimistic when I opened up the hive this past weekend.  Indeed, I had quite a few bees, but with only really spotty larvae and capped brood left in the hive, my lack of optimism was shown to be correct.  Likely the spotty brood/larvae, etc. is due to a worker bee taking over the egg laying duties for the hive.

This is bad news with a capital B.  A laying worker has not mated, and thus lays eggs that are not fertilized.  That means drones.  And, if you’re familiar with drones, they do nothing for the hive, as they lay around eating, and looking for a virgin queen to mate with – that’s about the extent of their life – thus there are no bees coming along that will do the foraging, nursing, and maintenance on the hive.

My next duty is to try and get some insight into whether it’s too late to try and right this ship.  Hopefully I can get some expert advice to augment my lack of knowledge on the proper course.  Maybe I should’ve taken up knitting?