The proof of the pudding...

Some say the proof of the pudding is in the eating, well in many cases it is.

A week or so ago, Kevin was kind enough to come over help share the trials and tribulations of setting the new queen free.

We opened up the hive, removed the queen cage - to thankfully find a live queen with a small cluster of Bee's clinging to the outside of her cage.

We took a frame with just a few bees on it and set the queen free onto this frame.

Immediately the Bee's approached her and they seemed to meet head to head with her and stroke her antennae. It was pretty amazing to see this social interaction and a second later a few more bee's approached her and did the same thing.

I think it was clear at that point that the queen was going to integrate well in her new home and so Kevin and I touched the frame against the top of the hive and like magic the new queen crawled off the frame in our hands and down into the darkness of her new home.

After a bit of comb tidy up and some frame rearrangement we put the hive back together and left the queen to settle into her new home.

We should mention that there did appear to be a lot of worker bee's in the hive, but no visible brood, only some sparse capped honey, this went along with the inspectors report of no queen, or a failing queen.

I have decided to leave the hive for two weeks to leave the new queen settle down. In this time I will keep feeding, right now its been over a week so I will be going into the hive for a quick inspection this coming weekend.