It's a bee of a different color!

Genetics fascinate me. As a soon-to-be-father, I wonder what characteristics my son will inherit from my wife and I. The easy part of 'genetic game' of my son is that we know with what we are dealing. His various features will either favor me (and my lineage) or my wife (and her lineage). What in the world does this have to do with beekeeping - stay with me :)

I recently went into the hive with the hive-produced queen, after removing the original queen to prevent a swarm. When I was observing the bees, I noticed an increasing population of black bees. The image below shows the 'golden' italian honey bees and this new black variety.

A queen travels to a 'honeymoon' spot which, like the royal honeymoon of Kate and William, no one knows the exact location. Drones from local hives all travel to this unknown spot and  await visiting queens. Each queen is inseminated by as many as 40 drones during her mating flights between 60-100 feet midair. The queen does not mate with drones within the hive as genetic diversity would be compromised. What is the Spermatheca?

These flights at the beginning of her adult life are all she needs to lay 2000 eggs per day for 3 years. I have read that the hive knows with with how many drones she has mated, based on the variation of a certain pheromone. By not mating with enough drones, the hive can reject the queen. Reference. While this queen seems to have increased the genetic diversity of the hive, there were about three supercedure cells; there is some undesirable trait. 

There was also one swarm cell which I promptly destroyed. 

Color variations on 'banding'

Ziploc Bag Feeders

Hive-top feeders have many advantages, but primarily benefit is related to hive stress. Each time the hive is opened it is the equivalent of your home roof being blown off by a hurricane. It is important to keep the hive's stress level low; with my mason jar feeders this was not being done. Each time I needed to refill a jar (elevated on two small stilts) the top of the hive needed to be taken off and numerous top-bars removed to reach the feeder. This was causing undue stress and I looked to the greatest product roll-out of 1968, the Ziploc Bag.

By filling a ziplock bag with sugar syrup and placing them atop the bars, it creates a large surface area for feeding. By taking a sewing needle (etc.) it is easy to pierce a good quantity of holes ON THE UPPER LAYER OF PLASTIC. Any air in the baggie is released through these and the bees can then insert their proboscis for food. A large quantity of bees are able to feed at once, in contrast to the small area of a pierced mason jar lid. 

Important note: Be sure there are spacers to elevate the lid above the baggie, to allow the bees to feed and not pop the bag open. 

Merging

To help the perceived overcrowding of the original hive, I decided to place a make-shift super atop the top-bars (with small gaps) and alternate empty top-bars between the established comb. The idea was to create additional vertical and lateral-space for the hive to grow. They quickly drew the comb on the empty bars, but not much was occurring in the 'super'. Yesterday, I decided to merge to 'super' into the established hive, since they might be forming a new queen soon. Due to this possibility, I wanted to ensure that the larvae present was moved into the core of the hive.

Moving the Queen to a Nuc

After a brief Facebook exchange with Kevin Ward, keeper and queen rearer in Indiana, he suggested I remove the queen from the hive and place her in a nuc. This will allow her to continue producing eggs, but not within the larger hive that already has recognized a defect in her. What this could allow for is (eventually) two queens laying for one hive. The hive is already too overpopulated with drones (I feel), so any additional worker production will greatly help the hive.

Supercedure Cells

Both of the hives with 'naturally' produced queens have supercedure cells. Below is a wide-shot and a tight-shot of the same queen cell in the Johnstown hive. There IS a larva in this cell - so it will soon be capped; the hive at my parents home is already capped. As one can see from the photo, the pollen stores are massive on this comb alone - so they are doing a nice job of bringing back needed protein. The hive is no-doubt unsatisfied with some aspect of the queen's leadership.

From my research, this is NOT a swarm cell - so I do not have to worry about any of my bees taking off. I know this because of the cell's placement. Had this cell been on the perimeter it would be a swarm cell.