Modern Homesteader

During peak season, a honey bee colony can contain up to 80,000 individual bees. When first installing a nucleus colony, you will only see roughly 15,000 individual bees. Male drones usually comprise around 15% of each colony. While female worker bees make up the majority of the residence in a colony, one edict of all colonies stands true; there is one queen and one queen only.

learning the signs of whether you have an unmated queen, a newly mated queen or a fully mated queen that is laying are all parts of the learning curve in beekeeping. Being able to spot the queen is the very first step. Although the queen’s abdomen is more elongated than that of her daughter’s, she is still extremely hard to find. Queen spotting is definitely a sport in itself.

All it takes is time and practice and with a little bit of luck, you can find her. I’m happy to report, I was able to find all three queens in each of my new colonies when installing them last month. They were all beautiful, fast moving and surrounded by newly laid eggs. It was definitely the highlight of my day.

I’m also happy to report, installing my two Carniolan honey bee nucleus colonies went as smoothly as I hoped. I anticipated a little aggression, as you should when working with any new bees, but they were quite calm and went into their new homes with ease. The stripes on their abdomens are a lot more prominent than when you see Italian honey bees, which helps when I see them out foraging. Even when I visit them now, they are extremely curious but gentle.

Reach Miriah at [email protected].