God Save the Queen! Honey Bee update.

Earlier this week we did a full inspection in the bee yard.  All of our hives survived the winter. We have 4 full size hives and 3 nucs.

 All hives are looking great except the Hufflepuff. They are getting ready to overthrow their queen (supersede). About a week and half ago the hive was full of capped brood and larva, but when we check them yesterday there was no capped brood and only a few larva. We spotted the queen, so she is still there...but she's not doing her job. So they are attempting to raise a new queen to supersede her.

We have a few different options that we could do. We could cull the queen (kill her) and introduce a new queen, or let nature take it's course and hope that they are able to successfully raise a new queen on their own.

We decided to allow them to raise their own queen.  We gave them some frames of eggs and larvae from another hive, and are hoping for the best.  This photo is a supercedure cell, and it's where they will raise their queen. Once the queen hatches, she'll most likely kill the old queen and go on a maiden mating flight to seek out drones from a different hive to mate with.  She will then return to lay eggs and act as the ruling queen.  It's all a little risky, but we are hoping it all works out other wise we could lose this hive.

 All other hives look good, we'll be doing some splits soon to hopefully prevent swarming. The bees are bringing in all kinds of different colored pollen. Red, orange, yellow and green!

They love the Dead nettle, this guy is covered in pollen.

i had no idea there were so many different colors of pollen.   You can see red, orange, yellow and green in the hive! 

i found this chart online to help identify some of the pollen colors. Right now our peach trees are in full bloom, but the bees can travel up to 2 miles radius looking for pollen. So i'm not sure what all they are bringing in.

We are hoping to pull honey after the next big honey flow. A bit disappointed that we probably won't be getting any from Hufflepuff while they are busy trying to raise a new queen instead of focusing on honey production.  i'm just really hoping that the new queen survives and can save the hive before it's too late. God save the queen!