Midnight

A traumatised queen.

I have spent a sunny afternoon checking through the hives and nuc boxes on my allotment giving the bees fondant and a couple of the bigger colonies thymol crystals.

I marked a super looking black queen that I am going to call Midnight. (given that she sticks around!)

After packing up and putting my gear into the shed I walked back down the path to find a very distressed queen with a green wing outside and on top of the nuc box. I put her back inside but she really didn't want to go she was fluttering and running along the edge not knowing what to do. I taped around the lid and halved the entrance hole at the front. I havn't seen anything like this before. But it could explain why I have lost some queens and why some of the nucs have taken off. Maybe the trauma of marking is too much for them when they are so young and I should leave it until they have gone through a winter before I mark them.