Catherine the Not-So Great Queen

Alexandra Hive Brood Pattern

The good news is that the Alexandra hive is drawing out the 2nd hive body and the queen is laying a great brood pattern up there - filling up the comb before they get the entire frame finished. Happy with their progress, I closed them up. No need to break the hive apart to check the lower box today.

Bees Hatching

I was surprised to find the bees in the Catherine hive had hardly drawn out any comb in their upper box even though it's been in place for three weeks. They haven't been taking much syrup either but they don't have anyplace to store it. Looking into the lower box, I was happy to find bees emerging right on schedule.

I began to notice how gentle these bees are acting, and didn't see eggs or larvae, and the bees were not chaining as I would pull up a frame. They're not acting 'queen-right'! Inspecting every frame, I found only spotty capped brood. No eggs. No larvae. And no Queen!

Supersedure Cell?

I did find a pair of empty swarm cells but Russian bees are known to have swarms cells handy that they never use. There was one supersedure cell that seems half built - or is it half dismantled? Hard to tell... I'll give the hive a couple of days to either cap the cell or finish removing it and that will tell me much.

Bees and Spotty Brood

This hive was progressing so well that I didn't bother looking for the queen since the last time I saw her when I put the 2nd hive body on three weeks ago. This has been a long enough period of time that they could have replaced her already but I didn't notice a virgin queen roaming around the hive even though they can be hard to spot. Thankfully, the other hive is coming along well. I just may have to move some brood over from the Alexandra hive so they may make a new queen if I am unable to find one already present.

Starting the hives so late in the year, and now this set back? Ugh! It's certainly going to increase the amount of 'Keep' in 'Beekeeping' to ensure the Catherine hive builds up strong for the coming winter!