The Day I (Almost) Lost a Queen

New Sasha Queen

My special friends Leah, Alex and Macallan along with their Aunt Sara visited the hives to help me check to see if the new queens had made it out of their cages. We first looked in on the Sasha hive and found the queen out and about. She has not yet begun to lay yet, but everything looks good so far. Before closing up the hive, we all had a taste of honey fresh off the frame as the Sasha hive has lots of honey going on!

The Dmitry hive queen was still in her cage so I removed it to show the kids. Aunt Sara held it while I peeked at the brood. No one noticed that the candy in the cage was eaten away on the back side which allowed the queen to make her exit. All of a sudden I heard Sara say, "Oh, here's the queen!" as the queen crawled up and out the opening of the cage. I turned to look just as the queen took flight and circled round and round, up over our heads until I lost sight of her...

Dmitry queen safely back home.

#%!?*# was running through my head but with little guests at the apiary, I think I said something more along the lines of, "This is not good..." Yet as soon as she took flight, she came back down and landed on the edge of the articulating cover leaning up against the next hive. I had honey on one end of the hive tool from getting the honey for the kids to taste, so I simply put the sticky end under the queen and transported her back to her new home. 

I know how lucky we were that the queen returned and I promise that I will never do that again! Whew!