The Queen with the Blue Dot!

Last Saturday, my dad and I went to beekeeping class. While we were there, we heard about the progress of our classmates' hives. It sounds like most people have been inspecting their hives pretty frequently, and I have mainly been leaving my bees alone, so I didn't have much to share.

We visited three hives that Jodi, our instructor, has behind her house. Two of the hives were newly installed, and within moments of opening the hives and looking at the frames we were able to find the queens. Like me, Jodi ordered "marked queens" which have blue dots on their back for (supposedly) easy identification. It seemed so simple! How have I never seen my queen? Maybe I don't have a queen? We also looked at an older hive that Jodi has which had at least 10 queen cells forming in preparation of a swarm -- which are incredibly creepy looking!

After seeing how "easy" it was to find the queens, I was determined to find my queen! Later that day, I took a break from working in the vegetable garden at my parents' house and went over to the hive (without any protective gear or smoker) on a mission to find the queen... and to replace the sugar-water feeding can which I removed last week and learned at bee class was a bad idea.

The first thing that happened was I grabbed the edge of a frame (without gloves) and squished a bee with my thumb and got STUNG. First bee sting! Totally my fault, although really pretty harmless. Then I removed some of the inner frames with more activity and searched for the queen.

Suddenly, there she was! I was thrilled. The queen is happy and healthy. Phew!

Hint: if you're having trouble seeing her (it's not the greatest photo), she's on the left, along the bottom of the frame's wooden edge, with a few bees around/above her, at about 8 o'clock.