Friends,

I'm a new bee keeper, with little equipment as yet.  I started this spring
with a 2 lb. package of Starline bees and a new Queen and 1 hive.  Since the
deep hive bodies get so heavy, I decided to stick to medium supers.  My
colony quickly overtook the existing space and swarmed.  I captured the
swarm, gave it a 2nd hive, and now have 2 colonies of bees.

The original hive swarmed 2 more times before I figured out I'd better be
ruthless about ridding it of queen cells.  I captured the 2nd swarm, put it
back in the hive, made sure it had a queen, then cut out all the queen
cells.

I took the queen cells and put them in a plastic container, figuring my
husband (who's a school teacher) would take them to work and donate them to
the science room.  To my surprise, one of the cells was viable and a queen
emerged.  I captured a 4 fuzzy looking young workers and stuck them with the
newly emerged queen in the shipping case my bees arrived in, along with some
empty comb, and some sugar syrup.  They are now sitting on top of my stove
to keep them warm, since the temperatures around here have been in the low
70s at night.

Is there anything useful I can do with this queen?  Can I just let her fly
and wish her well, or is she apt to screw up my existing hives? I'd keep her
and start another colony, but I'm not sure that I'd end up with any colonies
strong enough to survive the winter.  But so far, all my colonies have had
such lovely, gentle temperaments that I hate to waste a beautiful queen.

--Amee Abel

Contributing Editor: Home Office Computing
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