There is some cautiously optimistic, that’ll possibly turn out to be amazingly good, #beenews today. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Loyal readers may be aware that I’ve had queen problems this year, leading to me re-queening both colonies 11 days ago with bought mated queens. Failing queens is a growing problem, more here http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/queenperformanceproblems.html #beenews

When you look into buying a mates queen you suddenly realise the variety of strains out there. I went for Apis mellifera mellifera for a couple of reasons. 1, they may be a tad longer lived than other strains and 2, they’re supposedly better at repelling wasp attacks #beenews

They were introduced 30th July and I checked on 2 August. The candy holding the queens into their transportation cages had been chewed through by then, and the cages were empty, so I took them out. #beenews

I decided against lifting frames out to check they were alive in the hives, it was a tad windy and, honestly, I’d disturbed the hives enough in the last few days. I have them time to settle in #beenews

I figured today was a good bet to check, so we looked in this morning. We didn’t see either queen, so we can’t be sure, but I was checking more for brood and eggs so may have missed them #beenews

What I did see, in both hives, was a lot of brood in a good laying pattern. It might have been laying workers, sure, but it was a *lot* of brood for them to have produced quickly if so. Also... #beenews

(and this is the best bit) we saw eggs. Every egg I saw was slap bang in the centre of the base of the cell. Laying workers have shorter abdomens and tend to not be able to reach that far down, so end up laying on the sides #beenews

There was also just one egg per cell (apart from one cell where there *might* have been a second one or it might have been a trick of the light) #beenews

Queens lay one egg per cell, because they remember where they have laid, you get multiple eggs with laying workers, it’s one of the signs you have them, so this really is hopeful #beenews

Seeing capped worker brood and/or a queen next time would make it certain it’s worked out, but I’m happy for now. In which case, I now know how to fix a laying worker colony. Here end your #beenews for today.

PS I didn’t just plonk the queen cages in, btw. You have to change the pheromone signature of the colony first, so if you’re a beekeeper who needs to do this, ask me for details. Don’t want you to waste queens!