Success in Requeening Matilda and Bombay

I have to thank James Macdonald the owner of Armstrong Apiaries for rescueing Matilda from being shut down and that allowed me to maintain my 2 hive operation. Actually, I have 3 hives now as the former queen of Bombay rules the newly set up nucleus colony, Camille. I called James on Saturday morning 4th July and left a voice message to order queens. He called me back within an hour or two and was very assuring that he would be able to solve my queen problems and he guarantees gentle quality queens. He sent out 2 queens by priority mail on Monday afternoon and they arrived on Tuesday morning July 6th in the package below.

The brown bag with holes is where the 2 queen cages were packed in. I picked up the package from the Post Office at 9am and brought them to work. After work, I installed one of the queens into Matilda who had the drone laying queen removed 2 days before.

My new queens travelled by Canada Post comfortably for 446km from Armstong to Coquitlam. They were in transit for less than 18hrs.

In the queen cage there were 4 attendant workers and the queen. They were moving in the cage in a circular manner all day long. Super active and very different from the queens from West Coast Bee Supplies. The pheromone from the new queen was strong, that she already had a bee from Matilda who could not wait to pay her allegiance to her future queen. This bee on the cage was so mesmerized feeding the new queen that she did not even care what was going on around her.

The bees of Matilda could not wait to free their new queen and was instantly busy eating the candy barrier. Do you notice the majority of the bees  in the photo facing the cage? They were clearly excited about their new queen.

3 days later, the new queen of Matilda has been released. This photo was taken yesterday. Notice the circle of attendants around her. She definitely commands alot of respect.  From reading the frames she started laying almost the moment she came out of the cage as the oldest larvae is already about 8 days old. Look at the size of her. She is HUGE! Her laying pattern is excellent. I saw 2 frames of freshly laid eggs. What a feeling of satisfaction that the new queen has convincingly taken over the rule of Matilda. All my worries since April have been set aside and I can sleep well at night knowing that Queen Matilda II is running her hive well =).  She moves around the frames in a steady and confident pace but when I attempted to pick her up to get marked, she can really sprint. I caught her anyway, firmly and carefully on her thorax.

She is now marked. She is in my queen marking cup waiting to dry the marker point on her back. The paint I use is a non-toxic ink. I marked her green which was 09' colors as I only have 2 hives and the color does not matter. If I had many more hives, I would follow the colors of the year. I mark my queens to ensure that if the hive created another queen to supercede her, I'll know that happened.

By the way, this is my 2nd hive inspection without gloves and have not got stung. My attitude towards them have changed. I am no more afraid or nervous around them, which I think they detected it before and was aggressive then. Now I am confident of my handling of the frames and  less bees get injured on each inspection. Maybe one or 2 still. It used to be more than 10 injured bees per inspection. To safer and happier beekeeping for them.