Hello Queen

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Hello Queen

Martin Döbler • 19. April 2020

There is only one queen

The bees in the Riedmühle Petterweil are very busy. Here's a look at a honeycomb: There you see the queen - especially compared to the bees - So bow to the queen. :-) In the photo she cannot be seen in full size because her abdomen is in the cell to lay an egg on the cell base

And a little hint. The honeycomb also shows a special feature. Let's see who may recognize it.

Comments were:

"The Queen has a license plate"
"I thought someone transported a green pea there"
"The honeycomb is light on one side and dark yellow on the other ... It is normal for the queen to be marked, isn't it?"

Here are a few explanations
I will answer your comments and clarify some myths

Is not true

that we have to go to the registration office with the queen here in Petterweil to apply for a license plate
that the green is a pea. Everything would be fine: Queen carries peas to put the supposed princess under the 20 mattresses… .but we have no space for 20 mattresses on the honeycomb or the cells

Aber ja es ist ein grünes Plättchen:

so that we can find the queen faster when working on the bee colony and do not accidentally crush it or take it out of the colony accidentally when removing honeycombs. That would mean the failure of an entire generation of bees: Why:
Summer bees are only 4 weeks old.
It takes 16 days for a new queen to hatch (quiz and show-off knowledge: "Three Five Eight - Queen made" (3 days egg, 5 days made, 8 days cocoon)) and then again up to 14 days until she is mated and lays eggs
It's green because she was born in 2019: all beekeepers use 5 colors in the same order: white-yellow-red-green-blue. A new color every year. The color was green in 2019 ... so this year is the blue year. So we always know how old the queen is .. and whether e.g. lack of 'laying performance' or swarm mood is due to age
The number is particularly important for breeders

The honeycomb:
well recognized the two colors:

you have to know:

The size of the cell is different for bees than for drones (the men in the house)
We mainly need the girls (because they do the work in the bee state)
We control this somewhat by 'soldering' a wax plate ("middle wall") into the frame with given patterns of small size.
Only one honeycomb is reserved for the drones, which is then built freely

There are opinions that you can also let the 'normal' honeycomb be built by specifying a strip and the rest will build it accordingly. I tried it this year.

The result: 1 honeycomb was built to perfection, 4 of them used the space and built the drone cells on it. The picture is one of them.

So the special thing about the honeycomb in the picture is:

The darker part is built on the soldered wax strip (= half the middle wall).
The light part is completely built freely(that's good) - but with drone cells (it wasn't intended that way :-)).

To illustrate, here is a picture of how the frame with half the wax plate looked before they started.

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(English version)

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