Well it was fun and drama in the rescue hive this weekend. My gorgeous beekeeper was looking in the box, checking the frames and quickly noticed something was amiss. There were bee cells close to hatching, but no new lava.

The job of our Queenie is to walk around the frames laying egg after egg. If there are no new eggs, this implies the Queen isn’t there anymore.

Bear in mind that this is the swarm we recently rescued. So she’s either flighty (unsettled) or something was wrong with her.

Looking through the frames some more we began to notice there were queen cells. These look very different to the rest, they protrude like a peanut shell. These are made by the hive if they’ve lost their queen, or if they are going to swarm. And two of them had recently hatched!

As we moved through the frames we could hear a distinctly different noise from two places, a strange intense buzzing. This was coming from the queens who do this to test if there are others present. If there are, they’ll either eliminate their competition. Or one (or more) will leave the hive taking a portion of bees with her.

The fight is dirty and fierce. They will sting other queens while they are still inside their shell to stop them from hatching. And fight to the death with those who already have. And as queens have no barb on their stingers, they can stick ´em with the pointy end multiple times.

We located two queens and removed one of them. We left the better looking one behind, choosing her by shape and colour. Then we removed all the remaining queen cells.

All of the cells were on the point of hatching. And because my beekeeper had carefully removed them, they continued to hatch in the container.

And that’s when the fighting began. And the first rule of fight club?