Sometime between Thursday and today, the bees released the queen from her cage on their own, eating through the candy plug entirely. They even built some burr comb (wax comb that is out of place) on the side of the cage, and filled it up with condensed sugar syrup! I took the empty queen cage home with me as a souvenir.
Yes, I did stick my tongue into the burr comb to taste the sugar syrup. Wouldn’t you?
The bees have done a great job of building up lots of new comb over the past week. I’m seriously impressed. In a week or two, I’m going to go back in to check for evidence that the queen is laying eggs properly, but for now, this is the good news I’d hoped to see.
(Both photos in this post are better when seen large! Click on each to get to the large version.)
2 Comments
Beekeeping is a bid step. I loved all the photos of your set up on the roof of a NYC building – quite different from ours in the Virginia countryside. Are you close to a park so they have flowers (trees in flowers mostly) to go after?
Best wishes.
Sylvie, thank you! I’m close to a lot of yards and greenery along the streets, so I think they’ll be fine. I’ve seen them gathering pollen already!
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