Matilda- The Unfertilized Queen

On 6th June, I did a full inspection on Matilda and Bombay. The weather was cloudy and was threatening to rain when I started. The clouds were hanging low and from the high point at the beeyard, I could see the rain moving towards the east from Metrotown area. I guessed I had at least 45mins before it rained in my area. This is the worst type of day to check the hive. I started the fire and my fuel today was dried grass from the lawn mowings. Dried grass by far is the best fuel i've used so far. I've always used dried leaves and I never stuff my smoker full of fuel. After completing one hive, there will be no more smoke and I have to relight the smoker again for the next hive. Nowadays I don't need to relight my smoker as long I refresh the smoker with a few hard squeeze on the bellows every 10mins. Today,the foragers (high on adrenalin) are all panicky and short tempered on such a weather. It is just like confining race horses in their starting stalls for days. When a forager cannot fly because of the bad weather, its duty is to secure the hive from any sort of disturbance. So the moment I opened up the hive, the angry bees were flying into my face. I could hear the thuds on my face screen when they try to head butt into me.

Matilda- I spotted the 'useless' queen on frame 5 in the brood chamber. She is still laying drone brood. I am keeping her around till the new queen I ordered from Honeyland Canada is ready. Also her queen pheromone will keep the other ladies in line and to prevent a worker from laying. As all female bees have ovaries, a chosen worker bee will take on the role to lay unfertilized eggs. Once a worker starts laying, it is going to be really difficult to locate which is the laying worker and the new queen introduced would most likely be killed. The last resort if something like that occurs is to combine Matilda and Bombay. The honey storage were mostly in the super on frame 3-7. All the foundations are filled with wax except for frame 1&10 in the super. The green drone has only 1/4 filled with wax. I sugar dusted but did not count for mites.

Bombay- The queen was spotted on frame 4 in the brood chamber. With the Bombay queen, she allows me to sleep well at night. Again, she has not failed in showing me an excellent egg laying pattern. Even after transferring 2 frames of capped brood to Matilda about 2 weeks ago, there were 6 frames of brood today. I transferred another 2 frames of capped brood to Matilda. Hopefully this is the last transfer of capped broods. Last week on May 30th, I gave Bombay a pollen patty and it was gone on the 3rd or 4th day. The fastest I've ever seen them devour a pollen patty. Most likely coz of the high volume of brood rearing. What shocked me was there was hardly any honey left in the super. Last week, I had 8 frames of honey and 6 were already capped. But due to the long rainy period we had in Vancouver since April, the foraging time has been so short and the bees have consumed all of the honey. The rain has also caused alot of flowers to rot as they bloomed to early during the short sunny periods. The rain is also probably why Matilda's queen could not have a succesful mating flight. I will be making sugar syrup for them when I next visit. The weatherman has been so inaccurate in Vancouver. The next day's forecast can be sunny and then changed to rain forecast on the day itself and I think its one of the only jobs where you can make so many mistakes and blame nature. Lastly, before I closed up Bombay, they got sugar dusted. Did not count for mite levels as it started raining.

Flowers in Bloom around the gardens: Himalayan Blackberries, Chives, Sage, Salvia, Dandelions, Kale, Foxglove, Red Poppy, Lupin, Dogwood, Beauty Bush, Mock Orange (Philadelphus), late Rhododendrons, Sweet/Snow Peas, Spiraea, Tree Peony (Rose like), Delphinium