Today we checked to see if thy royalty or royalties have revealed themself(ves).

Our experiment: We had a queenless nuc with three queen cells, two of which we left and one that we cut out and stuck in an isolated box with a new set of bees. In theory we should soon have two new queens.

Let’s take a peek to see if a queen has hatched from either mini nuc:

• Nuc 1 (the one with two queen cells) – Ka ching! Both hatched and one virgin queen is out and running!
• Nuc 2 (the one with the isolated box) – angry buzzing coming from the feeding basin and no signs of progress.

Check out the photos from Nuc 1:

Here are the photos from the less promising nuc 2:

Plans:

Nuc 1: We’ll wait for the virgin queen to return from her mating flight before they are transferred to a regular nuc. It’s getting cramped in there!

Nuc 2: Based on the chart below, it can take 1 – 7 days for a queen to hatch when capped. We will return with part 3/3 when the maximum amount of days has passed. Before then, we’ll make their fairly empty place a little more habitable by exchanging a frame with a drawn out frame.

http://www.purepeihoney.com/uploads/1 /1/8/4/11846875/2259957.jpg?380