I may be losing my mind – that would be a much easier explanation – or I just observed a very odd thing. I was looking into the two nucs with some bees, hives 5 and 6. Hive 5 is the cardboard box which is supposed to have my ‘banked’ queen from Georgia, which I cleverly called Georgia (not to be confused with George). I thought this was ok because this queen would only be around for this year and we could retire the name. Unfortunately, she swarmed and therefore Georgia 2 was produced whom I might keep.
When I pulled a frame from hive 5 there was a queen marked in blue! I’m almost certain that the banked queen was marked in yellow and it was worn mostly off. As far as I remember, there was only one queen marked with blue. Kristien was here and helped me mark the queen from hive 1 who is Sally 2a. She is the one that was lifeless when we put her back into the hive after I marked her. That might have been June 18 or maybe later I can’t remember. At least three, maybe four weeks ago. I haven’t wanted to take apart hive 1 for a full inspection. I wanted to let the blue queen recover and if she was dead or damaged, let the bees raise a new queen and wait until I could look for larvae, which I calculate to be almost exactly a month. If I do an inspection next week and find a blue queen, I will know I have lost my mind. If there is an unmarked queen, then she is a newby and the blue marked Sally 2a did in fact move to hive 5. This brings up a few interesting questions. What happened to Georgia? How did Sally 2a get from hive 1 to hive 5 and why?
So here is the new lineup since my post on queen status on June 30.
Hive 1: Sally 2a Sally 3?
Hive 2: Georgia 2a
Hive 3: Sally 2b
Hive 4: Sally 2c
Hive 5: Georgia Sally 2a
Hello Todd, that is indeed a confusing story. I have a few questions. Let me start with Sally 2a. We indeed marked her blue, your pen, so a kind of light shade. I also have a blue marker, but I don’t think I used that yet on bees, being partial to yellow. 1. what was in the hive 5 as far as you remember? 2. besides blue sally 2a, are there bees? Can she have swarmed? 3. are there bees in the hive that sally2a came from, and is there brood (and a sally3).
I am more confused about what you say about Georgia. You banked her in hive 5, but than she warmed? Can you give more chronologial details about the Georgia line?