Beautiful Bee Pics! Spring 2018
Looking back at my pics from spring 2018, I see a few that caught my attention when I was out in the field. As I mentioned in the last post, there were some tiny, tiny clusters this spring after the long winter. This one had twenty bees and a queen. It is remarkable that they raised any brood at all with such a nominal number of heat generators in the nursery. I think this queen got transplanted into a queenless colony where she gained more support.
Tiny Cluster and Queen 2018
After the dandelions came along, the brood picture got uniformly more encouraging:
Beautiful Brood 2018
Very quickly--within about a month--we went from a chilly dearth to the possibility of cells
An Extra-Extended Queen Cell
And here is one of the fun sights I get to spot once or twice a year: two queens coexisting during supersedure. One of the queens here is harder to spy, so there is a little bit of "Where's Waldo" challenge in this one. Good luck!
Two Queens During Supersedure
Tiny Cluster and Queen 2018
After the dandelions came along, the brood picture got uniformly more encouraging:
Beautiful Brood 2018
Very quickly--within about a month--we went from a chilly dearth to the possibility of cells
An Extra-Extended Queen Cell
And here is one of the fun sights I get to spot once or twice a year: two queens coexisting during supersedure. One of the queens here is harder to spy, so there is a little bit of "Where's Waldo" challenge in this one. Good luck!
Two Queens During Supersedure