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That moment when you go...

..."what the heck is going on here?" For the first time in my illustrious and well documented career as a beekeeper, I was faced with a situation I had no answer for. There I was, staring at a frame full of capped brood, when suddenly my eyes were drawn to a small concentrated patch of opened cells with exposed pupa in them. Immediately I said to myself, "that's something I haven't seen yet. Are they sick!?"

"I wonder what that is," I said to my mother-in-law. "What?" she asked. "Those weird looking open cells with chewed off capping and exposed brood. Huh, guess I'll have to make a note of it and ask my beek mentor about tomorrow." Great. Now I have to wait until tomorrow to find out if my colony is doomed or if it is just normal behavior with a few bees cleaning up sick brood.

The internet has thusfar been a treasure trove of beekeeping information, but I just didn't know how to formulate the phrase for the Google Search. "OK Google!" "bah-bloop" "weird looking pupa in chewed open cells." "bah-beep" - A bazillion hits of images of brood from a bazillion different blogs. Good luck finding EXACTLY the same thing I observed in my colony! Try it again. "OK Google!" "bah-bloop" "chewed open cells with pupa looking out" "bah-beep" - Same garbage results. *Sigh* Guess I will have to wait until tomorrow.

At any rate, the nuc colonies are looking pretty good. Seems to be plenty of brood and food stores. Pollen is being brought in at a very good clip.I did find Adriana afterall, as well as the other queens, Chewbacca and Leia. The frequent feeding seems to be bringing results. A lot of the wax foundations are being drawn out, so I will stick with this routine. Below is a nice photo of a little worker gathering some water from my in-laws fountain.

Copyright 2015 Jason Hotham
Notice the colors. More than likely it is a crossbreed of Buckfast and Carnolian (Apis mellifera carnica). Buckfast have bands of orange and brown on the upper abdomen, while Carnolians are generally all grey and black. Some day I'll write an entry going into more detail about both kinds of bee.

For now, I will hope for the best, oh and by the way, I was only joking about an illustrious career! *wink*

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