About a month ago, I introduced my daughter to our new queen.
Then I hung the cage containing the new queen inside Lavender. I checked after two days, and she was still in the cage. A very good friend of mine put on my extra hat and veil to take some pictures and catch a peek inside.
A couple days later, I checked again, and the queen and all her attendants were dead inside the cage. That night, I called my Dad, and he looked back through my pics on the blog. He explained that the laying pattern I was seeing was just spotty because queens in the spring don't always lay consistently, and the pattern when they start out in the spring can sometimes just be off.
So I was apparently wrong, there had been a queen in the hive all along, and it just wasn't laying in a nice even pattern like I'd anticipated.
Over the past four weeks, during weekly inspections, I've verified this by finding new brood throughout a couple frames. Finally, the laying pattern is what it should be, and is finally looking better. Now, with time, I expect the numbers in the hive will start to increase.
On a better note, Rose is excelling (may have excelled even more if it hadn't swarmed at least once, maybe more) and already has a lot of honey. I'll go into more detail about this in my next blog post.
But yes, you did read correctly, I'm fairly certain that Rose has spawned at least 1 or 2 swarms, because I didn't give them enough space fast enough. Upon inspection four weeks ago, I spotted empty queen cells hanging off the bottom of the frames in the top hive body, which is a tell tale sign of swarming. I'm definitely learning something new every day, and I'll apply what I've learned to next year.
For other beekeepers out there, I'd say the one thing to take away from this post is patience. If I had taken more of a wait and see philosophy with Lavender, and just been patient, I wouldn't have lost a perfectly good queen. I learn something new every week when I check on these beautiful ladies!
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