Tatjana, the Russian Queen

Doing an inspection of “Hive 6” I spotted Tatjana, the Russian Queen I got from Dan Conlon. She was laying eggs. Can you spot her?

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The frayed, light-colored bee below her, off to the left, is a callow bee: just eclosed. The two dark marks on the queen’s back aren’t mites, but pigment markings. Believe me, I checked!

I encountered the problem with the double nucs I mentioned before: bees crawling up the wall of the other top box and having to be brushed or smoked down before I can replace their second box:

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More problems: the other top box still being in place gets in the way of the wedge tool’s function of lifting tightly wedged/glued frames out. Lastly, the other box being unoccupied by bees, it had become home to ants! I am not liking this design one bit. I may move Tatjana and her people into the 5-frame nuc I have available, depending on what I do this weekend. On Saturday another Russian queen is coming my way, also from Dan. I may use her to replace the very slow-to-start or defective superseding queen in Hive 4 (Laura, who is Bianca’s daughter). Or I may split Hive 3 (Beatrice) and put them in the other side of the box and make Hive 7! In that case, how to get the ants out first…

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