Tuesday, July 5, 2011

A new Queen

I managed to get a couple of quick pictures of the new queen honeybee whom I've named "Calico". She came from a queen cell that I swiped from my Old Queen's hive to a new small 5-frame hive 'nuc' with. She emerged in her new nuc, took her mating flight last month, and has been laying wonderfully. I've been taking out frames of her eggs to give to my other hives now, for them to make new queens from as well. She seems like a winner, and it was hard to get a photo of her because she kept running so fast to the other side of the frame I was holding up for the photo- she was trying to get away from the bright sun. She's quite a golden beauty!

(click on the photos and you'll see them bigger)





3 comments:

  1. Are those Italians? We have carniolans and our queens are almost black.

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  2. Hi Michelle, That queen is a mix- possibly some italian and Russians and lots of 'mutt' genes.
    Another beekeeper said she looked a lot like his Cordovan Italians.

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  3. She's a beauty :) I like the look of the yellow ones.

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