Early on the morning of June 29th, we met at Kristien’s yard to assess the queen cells.  First we checked the deep nurse colony:

The bee density was not as strong as we had hoped for.   A possible solution to this is to gather the bees for the nurse colony in one yard and maintain the colony in another.

Success!

There were 9 queen cells on the frame (one doesn’t show in this picture.  Todd, do you have any better pictures of this frame?)

Then we moved on to the medium nurse colony:

 The bee density here was better.

Side 1:

Kg Kg Kg Kg Kl Kl Kl
Kg = Kristien Grafted George
Kl = Kristien Grafted Lisa

Side 2:

Lg Lg Ml Ml Ml Ml Ag Ag
Ag Ag Ag
Lg = Liz Grafted George
Ml = Mel Grafted Lisa
Ag = Andrew Grafted George

That’s 10 queen cells on the scraped frame!

Then Kristien’s eagle eyes spotted this:

 A swarm cell!  Those crowded bees have been busy!

A grand total of 20 queen cells between the two nurse colonies!

We went into the house and had a strategy meeting to figure out how many of these cells we could possibly provide mating nucs for.  After much consideration, we came up with a plan to develop 17 mating nucs. Any cells beyond 17 will be doubled up in one of the nucs.  We’ll each go home and prepare our yards and return at 5 in the evening to put the cells into their protectors and place the queen cells in the nucs at Kristien’s. By now it was approaching 11:30.

Now the work began!

I went home and immediately set up the nurse colonies in two new medium nucs.  I closed the entrances with screen so that the bees will be confined until the queen emerges.  That was complete by about 1 pm. Then I made circular holes in the covers for the side compartments in the queen castle so that I could feed each colony.  I mixed up 1:1 syrup, enough to feed everybody in the yard, hoping to avoid any kind of robbing. I organized the frames of comb and stores that I plan to use to establish the side compartments of the queen castle.  The brood frame will come from Kristien.

With those tasks completed, I returned to Kristien’s to pick up the queen castle and the queen cells.

We lined the top of each protector with a thick bead of wax to adhere the protector to the queen cell.  Kristien removed the cells from the scraped frame and each person placed their designated queens into protectors.  I took the two successful grafts I had on the deep frame and two of Andrew’s successful grafts.  We left the swarm cell in the center compartment to mature and mate which makes for a total of 5 mating nucs I’ll be tending in my yard.

I returned to my yard at about 7:15 and got to work.  Kristien came a few minutes later to help me out.  Together we placed the protected queen cells between the frames of brood in each nuc, arranged the food and then closed them up.

Now time will tell!

We ended an incredible day of beekeeping with a delicious dinner at Simply Asia.  Yum!