Despite what I said the other day, I feel I'm getting to grips with beekeeping, it is no longer a huge mystery that makes my head whirl, I'm even thinking of taking exams in it. Yep the BBKA take it seriously enough to offer a complete exam route http://www.bbka.org.uk/learn/examinations__assessments. There is a Basic Assessment for everyone, then you can choose whether to go down the practical or theoretical route or to do everything and become a Master Beekeeper.
One thing has been holding me back though, the fear that I shall never learn how to spot the queen. Last year we lost the marked queen in a swarm so by the end of the summer I had three unmarked queens. On every inspection I looked for the queen but newly hatched queens are small and not easily spotted and the weather was so bad last year that the bees would not tolerate the hive being open for long while I searched for the needle in the haystack
You might think if the bees are doing well, and the hive is full of young healthy brood, that it doesn't matter if I can't spot the queen. This is true up to a point, but most manipulations require the queen. Making an artificial swarm to ward off the real thing, for example, calls for the queen to be put in one brood box and the majority of brood and bees in another.
So I was amazed and delighted when I spotted the queen in hive 1 yesterday. Hive 1 is our original hive, it is much less vigorous than hive 3 with brood on 5 frames but from chatting to other beekeepers I find this is pretty average. Having less bees in the hive certainly made it easier to spot the queen. Having spotted her, she was so different from the other bees that I had to laugh at all my attempts to spot her previous when I would stare anxiously at drones or even large worker bees worrying that I might be missing the queen. Here I would love to show you photographs but I was on my own at the hive and holding a frame of bees in one hand and trying to find the marking cage with the other whilst keeping the queen in sight and having my veil buzzed by guard bees. Photographs weren't going to happen. Gingerly putting the frame down on the hive, whilst worrying that I would crush bees on the underside, I popped the marking cage over the queen like putting a glass over a spider. There I inserted the sponge covered plunger which stops her escaping. The marking cage is designed so that as you move the plunger down to the mesh coated end, the queen is forced down until she is against the mesh and can be marked. In my panic and excitement I pushed the plunger down until her underside was trapped against the mesh. there seemed little point in marking that so I pulled the plunger back and gave her the freedom to turn round so I could try again.
The beekeeping world has adopted a standard rotation of the colours blue, white, yellow,red and green so that by marking the queen, it not only makes it easy to spot her but it is possible to say when she was born as well. Last year's colour was yellow and I had dutifully bought the appropriate marker pen so I took it in hand and tried to dab it on her back. Truthfully I didn't do very well, too scared of damaging her I think, and some of it landed on her wings as she moved as I didn't have her pressed securely against the mesh, again too scared of damaging her. Some people clip the queen's wings to restrict her ability to leave with a swarm. I can't imagine how I would ever manage to do that. Fortunately the beekeeping world is divided on whether it is worth it or not so I don't have to.
So very pleased with myself, I now have a queen bee with faint traces of yellow markings which may well brush off in the hive. My next manipulation (apart from still trying to find and mark the queens in the other two hives) is .to move a frame of brood from hive 3 to hive 1 to try and equalise things a little. Hive 3, bless them is going amazing well given the late cold winter and has brood on 9 frames. Although I would like to use the Demaree method of artificial swarming to make a couple of nuclei and increase my number of hives, I would prefer to leave this until mid to late May so in the meantime reducing their colony by 1 frame will actually give them more room in the hive to expand and delay swarming.
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