I write this with one eye swollen shut. My neck is as wide as my ears, and I look a lot like a football player, right down to the eye black. And no, I’m not allergic to bee stings: this is normal. I had no labored breathing, weakness in the knees, or rapid heart. And […] Read more
To make queen liqueur or tincture of queen, beekeepers soak recently dead or pinched queens in a small vial of rubbing alcohol. The alcohol preserves the queen and, supposedly, her pheromones as well. Come swarm season, a beekeeper can wet a cotton ball with the juice, place the cotton in a baggie with a few […] Read more
Several weeks ago a reader asked why he kept finding queen bees in his honey supers. He mentioned that each of his queens had crossed a honey barrier to get into the supers, and they seemed to be lounging or inspecting the warehouse. He asked if I had an opinion. I’ve always wondered what queen […] Read more
I want to share an interesting conversation I’ve been having with Oregon beekeeper Morris Ostrofsky. After I posted about how to use swarm guards, he challenged the idea that virgin queens can sometimes get through them. He wrote: I had a conversation with Dan Purvis some years ago regarding virgin queens and queen excluders. Dan […] Read more
You open your hive but you can’t find your queen. Worse, you see no young brood—no larvae, no eggs. Several things are possible: What should you do? At this point, you wonder what to do. You could buy a queen, but maybe you have a virgin queen or a newly mated queen and you just […] Read more
For short term storage, queen bees can be kept in a banking frame. This is a simple device made by installing a horizontal bar into a regular frame, creating a space that is just large enough to hold your queen cages. The banking frame can be used for up to about three weeks. Queens kept […] Read more
Although we are taught that two queens can’t survive in one hive, it happens frequently. It occurs most often when a supersedure cell hatches while the original queen is still alive. The virgin daughter hatches, mates, and begins to lay eggs right alongside her mother. This is usually a temporary situation, but it can persist […] Read more