New Queen Spotted!

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Another successful check! I wore a GoPro today, so you can watch all the highlights on the video below.

The biggest news is that a new queen was seen, though she isn't laying yet and almost made a great escape! The hive looked a little stressed as we saw signs of chewed off brood caps and what appeared to be sacbrood. Sacbrood is a viral brood disease where the larvae are standing straight up in their cells, are pointy, and are brown. This is not a virus carried by Varroa mites and often symptoms disappear when the hive regains its strength. To bolster the new queen, we added a frame of brood from her mother's colony which is doing well after the split. Hopefully at the next check we will see the new queen laying and no signs of brood disease.

Unfortunately, the Flow Hive Super was still pretty dry though there were some bees working on the bottom of the frames, so no harvest today.

We did not perform a mite check today because there was almost no brood in the hive and it had just had a brood break while making their new queen.

We spotted a worker bee with deformed wing virus. This is a virus carried by Varroa mite. Not sure if this gal came from the Flow Hive, but it is a sign of a high Varroa load somewhere in the bee yard. :(

The next check is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, August 14th at 10:00am at the A2B2 Club Apiary at Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

Plan:
1. Check new queen is laying.
2. Mite Check +/- Treatment
3. Harvest Honey?

P.S. Saw bees with huge, white pollen baskets. White pollen possibilities in July: Lima Beans, Lemon Mint, Globe Thistle, Magnolia, Angelica, Rose-of-Sharon (Hibiscus), Plantain Lily, Cardinal Flower, Mallow, Sweet Bergamot, Sourwood, Balloon Flower, Mountain Mint, St. Mary's Thistle [Source: Garden Plants for Honey Bees by Peter Lindtner]

For more information on the Flow Hive or the A2B2 Flow Hive Team, please contact Jen Haeger at mentorship@a2b2club.org.