pollination: meet the new queen
See into a young beehive. This video was shot with an inspector's videoscope, so the frame rate is low and makes it look choppy. Nonetheless, the videoscope allowed me to record activity inside of one of my new hives - and by chance, I caught footage of their new queen only two days after installation from a package that shipped in from Georgia. You can recognize her because her abdomen is larger, more of a pale yellow and her wings are set out to the side instead of folded onto her back. My apologies that she is not marked, this would make it much easier to recognize her ... and I need to take care of this before the hive population increases. Notice areas in which the honeycomb is shallow and others where it is fully formed. This is because I gave the bees some frames with new foundation mixed with frames that already had drawn comb with honey. If possible, I try to feed my bees with honey instead of sugar water because it's better for them; and I have many frames with honey from my hives that sadly died in late winter of this year.
Below are images from the package installation, two days before this video was taken.
Photos by Sarah Loy, 2015.