Its been over a week since we introduced the bees from New Zealand to their new home here at Still Creek Garden. The queen had been shipped in what is called a “Queen Cage” The cage has a hole plugged with a cork for the trip but the cork was removed and replaced with a piece of sugar fondant. Within a few days the worker bees will have eaten the candy and the queen hopefully will have been released to start laying eggs to build up the colony.
checking the frame
Saturday was a great day to take a look and see if the queen was out and about. We opened the hive and the bees were very calm and didn’t seem to mind the intrusion. Taking a look at the frame where the queen cage was placed I could see that the candy was gone and there was no queen inside.
queen cage
Queen Cage close up
I don’t have much luck in spotting the queen in my other hives until another beekeeper told me not to look so hard and you will find her. Sure enough this was the weekend that the queen was spotted in 2 of my hives and the new hive at the garden! The queen looks a lot different from her worker bees. Her abdomen is longer, filled with the sperm to provide for the egg laying. When she starts to lay the eggs she can lay up to 2000 eggs per day! Here is the queen from the garden in all her glory. click on the image to get the up close version.
The Queen
I don’t have a habit of naming my queens but I think that this should be something we should do at the garden. If anyone has any suggestions please do make them!
The bees had built a bit of new wax comb on some of the frames and had moved some of the sugar-water or the honey to some cells in other frames. I did not see any eggs but this is not out of the ordinary and we should see eggs in the next inspection. For now it is great the queen is out and the bees are looking good.
Bees on the Frame and Nik working on the Wipper-Snipper
Still Creek Community Garden 
I like the idea of naming queens after herbs. What about Artemisia? And Yarrow for the other one?
Since you are the only one to reply from the garden I think your names win by acclamation! Artemisia and Yarrow it is.
What a lovely long dark queen.
My beekeeping partner and I name our queens after aromatherapy oils, so far we’ve had Rose, Rosemary and Lavender (all bee friendly flowers too)
Reblogged this on Tales of an urban bee farmer and commented:
Check out the hive at the garden!