All three of my emergency cell queens are back and on the job. YAY!

Saw that two of my three colonies that were raising queens from emergency cells had queens that had successfully mated and returned earlier this week but the third hive had no eggs or brood yet, I was planning on combining the remaining queenless colony with another hive but nature had other plans.
I discovered the third queen is back and on the job today!
From the looks of the larvae, 4-5 days on the job in fact.
I was able to find her and man, she’s a pretty one. Not too shabby for queen raised from an emergency cell and left to mate with the unknown local drones.

It was a big risk but I was fortunate to go 3 for 3 letting the bees raise their own queens.

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Well done Bobby, especially with no suit. That queen IS a beautiful queen. She’s as good or even better than a bought one. I read in a book one day that 1 out of 7 queens will fail. That’s what I work on. I’m always prepared for failures.

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I don’t know if I am perpared for everything but with everyone’s help here and these great videos, I now I will be better off than not. Please keep up all the great info and videos. I know here I can get an emergency queen if I need one. My mentor rases queens, I have not spent time with him yet doing that but watching this and your others I do want too.

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Sweet indeed Bobby! Great to see how well that worked out. Happy Father’s Day :sunglasses::palm_tree:

Bobby,

:+1: Congrats Bro ! Glad you got all the colonies fired up again… I’ve got a couple I’m
Not seeing fresh larva … Hopefully it’s just my crappy vision. :eyes:… Should have new glasses coming from the V.A. in a couple more weeks … The VA had to paste one retina back on n that had been my best eye … That had been my BEST EYE. Maybe someday when I know all are Queened I’ll get someone to MARK them for me :ok_hand:.








Decided to not wait on climbing aboard the Flow-Experience ! Been busy on Fathers Day fitting n gluing ! Should get the Tung Oil on today then add the parts. Wish me luck ! Looks to be easy … I did build several hive setups from scratch this winter. The Flow-Super seems to have great directions n drawing plus I’ve watched several good vids too.
Love your cheery vids bro. I look forward to each one ! Have a great week …:honeybee::honeybee::honeybee:

Cheers,

Gerald

@JeffH I’ve been told my bees are pretty calm by another beekeeper but I can confidently say that I have been stung at least 8 times since starting this adventure back on March 19th. Typically, I use my jacket and veil almost all the time except for cursory inspections and even then I always wear a hat and veil. It was just so hot yesterday and since I’d already gotten cleaned up for Father’s day, I didn’t want to get all sweaty. (I did get a sting on the upper arm BTW)

I think the queen is great. She’s the only one of the three home grown queens I’ve seen so far but since they are all sisters I’m hoping the others are like her as well. I attribute the 100% success rate to the local drone population and this brings me you @Martydallas - I want you know I likely would have purchased queens were my circumstances different.

I’m fortunate to have at least 3 multi-hive apiaries all withing a mile-and-a-half of my location so there were plenty of drones to increase the odds of my queens having successful mating flights.

Check out this map:

Other factors contributing to my decision to let the bees raise their own queens was that the beekeeper closest to me could supply me with bred queens literally within minutes if I needed them so my overall risk in this scenario wasn’t nearly as high as others like yourself @Martydallas may find themselves in should they lose (or in my case kill) a queen.

I was away for a little over a week and came back today and immediately did full hive inspections.

My one hive has 5-8 queen cells in it and no queen, no fresh eggs, and only a little larva that is about to be capped. I am not sure if it swarmed or not. The hive was only using 5 out of 8 frames so they had room. Given there are no eggs I am assuming the queen died.

So like you @Bobby_Thanepohn I will wait for a new queen to emerge.