Free the Queen

Remember my queenless hive #1?!?!? My bee mentor was kind enough to build me a new nuc with some of his bees, frames of brood and some of my bees from hive #1. All of this PLUS a new queen in a cage. The caged queen was sitting on top of the frames inside the nuc box. The bees were hopefully “getting to know her”. A piece of duct tape was keeping the bees from getting to her. Yesterday, after a few days of letting the box sit, I went to remove the duct tape from the queen cage. The bees had been feeding her through the screen of her cage. Once the duct tape was removed only sugar candy was keeping the bees from reaching and freeing the new queen. I’m guessing in a matter of hours they were able to work through the candy and free her. Hopefully they will accept her and in about ten days we will see evidence that she is laying on the frames. From there we will be able to reassemble hive #1. I wasn’t able to get any good pictures of the queen as I was just trying to not damage or lose her! This is the best I have to give you and idea…

You can just barely see a glimpse of her bottom below the screen. Inside the black tube is the candy – the bees will work through that to gain access and free her from the cage. It’s going to be hard to stay out of that nuc for ten days but I’m going to try to let it bee! 😉

– Worker Bee 2021