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Date: | Fri, 27 Apr 2001 01:09:37 -0400 |
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I have often heard the old adage that when looking for a queen you must assume she could be anywhere in the hive. And this is certainly true - in my experience
she can be found on the hive walls, on the inner cover, on frames of honey, but almost all the time she's on a frame of young brood. Today, however, I was
cleaning out an old dead-out hive from winter. It was really dead, with moldy bees packed everywhere, and no signs of life. When I started, I tossed the inner
cover (with stored queen excluder stuck on top) onto the ground. Following cleaning, I went to pick this up when I noticed a queen plus one single worker
together between inner cover and excluder!
I retrieved her and put her in an old queen cage and banked her along with the new queens I bought this spring. I'm going to try to introduce her into a nuc just to
see what happens.
I am amazed at this. How could a single bee, and especially a queen, survive in a hive where the colony is long dead? It is much too early for queen production
and swarming in my area, so she couldn't be a lost virgin (she certainly did not look like a virgin, although she was obvioiusly not in laying condition). Has
anyone else ever seen anything like this?
Ted Fischer
Dexter, Michigan USA
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