Big Doin's

So, as promised, the post. If you remember, the Crosby hive was not living up to its full potential and was being outpaced by Ovechkin. We decided that a look see was needed to find out exactly what Crosby was up to.

Saturday was a beautiful day, a bit breezy but no matter. I donned my bee suit and Dave got on his hat and gloves and fired up the smoker. After taking off the inner cover we saw that Crosby was still working on the same five or so frames as the last time we looked. I found this a bit discouraging, but proceeded to pull out the frames, looking for some kind of clue as to exactly what the heck was going on. When I pulled out the first really full frame of comb and bees Dave said “There’s a blob of something on this side.”

I turned over the frame and low and behold, a thing I’d only heard about: The Almighty Queen Cell that you can see more about here. The books all say it looks like a peanut and, by the gods, it does. A really large peanut, but certainly nothing like the rest of the cells. There were also eggs and open cells of larva. I’m assuming that something happened to Crosby’s queen that necessitated a new queen be raised up. If all went well, the queen should have hatched by now – or be really close to hatching. That means she’ll go on her mating flight in the next week and be merrily laying eggs soon. In a month there should be a new hatch of bees flying around Crosby. On the down side that means I’ll be feeding Crosby for a lot longer than I wanted to, but those are the breaks.

I went into Ovechkin today and found that the second brood box is almost filled. I added a super with ten frames and will remove the sugar syrup jars for the last time once they’re empty. Ovechkin will be officially self sufficient. Just in time for the multiflora rose bloom.

In the Garden: the corn is growing, I’ve lost one of the cucumber plants so I planted some more seeds, and the eggshells seem to be working keeping the slugs away from the basil. I retested the soil for nitrogen and there appears to be high levels (yay!).

Apologies for lack of pictures… I should have taken some of the queen cell, but my gloves were all syrupy and nasty and I didn’t want to muck up my camera.