Lost queen at Costessy, Sticky and allotment queen breeding begins

I was called to my first swarm of the year and helped the beekeeper collect them. The bee briefs have arrived.

I took the first queens out of my hives today.

One was from one of my very best hives of my nicest bees on the allotment.

I had left the hive last year with two brood boxes and fed it up throughout the summer and autumn enough to put on a super above the queen excluder on top of the two brood boxes. I fed them from Christmas onwards with bakers fondant although they didn't need it. A few weeks back I found and marked the queen and put her in the bottom brood box. Nearly two weeks ago I put in a frame of drone foundation. The drone foundation today was drawn out with eggs and brood in it but none capped. Today I took the queen from the bottom brood box and the frame she was on plus one other frame of brood. From the top brood box I took two frames of solid stores. I put those into a brand new brood box on a new open mesh floor. I put a sprinkling of Thymol crystals along the lugs of the four frames with brood and stores in and a new crown board on top. Once strapped down his box is ready to leave my apiary now and will probably be picked up at the weekend.

The original brood box still has the frame of drone foundation and the remainder of the brood in the bottom brood box. It still has the queen excluder on and the super on above that. The top brood box I left until dark then removed and other filled up frames of stores to my bee proof store. Next Wednesday I will open up that brood box again and take out the frame of drone foundation and I expect to find queen cells on several of the frames I've left behind.

My last visit to Old Costessy (apart from when moving hives there) was on the 5th ten days ago. When I mentioned I had lost the queen in the hive on bricks I didn't think I had actually lost her out side the hive. But that is what must have happened as that hive had queen cell in today .

Not only did it have queen cells in the super frames at the top but at least two open queen cells in the brood box below. I put two separate super frames in two nuc boxes with the queen cells and three or four frames of stores. What a mess and the loss of good queen.

I moved Sticky out of her double brood box and marked her yellow -- this time I will check that she is there in a few days time.