Austin Beelove

Check out the beautiful open air combs bees have built on this bucket ❤🐝

This was a swarm trap I set this spring as a test. At some point the bucket fell to the side, but the bees still moved in and when they ran out of space they kept building comb right out the entrance and down the outside.

They are still living in the bucket, but it's a cold morning so they are clustered up on the inner combs.

Removed these ladies from behind a soffit and was able to very carefully lift out the combs that extended down behind the stone facade without having to open the stone work saving the homeowner $$ & labor.

Using a sewer camera is so useful in these instances to visualize how far down the comb goes and to ensure you have removed all comb from areas you can't see into otherwise.

This colony had many almost all-black bees. I love it when the bees have genetics that are highly variable from commercial bees.

Removing this new baby sized hive from a shed floor and......it's laying worker!

So how does this happen? Once the main swarm has left the colony, any subsequent swarms (called after swarms) will swarm with virgin queens. The virgin queen won't go out to mate until the swarm has picked their permanent home. After going to mate, If the virgin doesn't make it back from her mating flight, the colony will have been broodless for a few weeks. Without the open brood present, the workers begin to lay as their ovaries are no longer suppressed by pheromones present in brood. Voila, a brand-new colony that is laying worker.

In a laying worker colony, the eggs the workers lay are haploid and develop into drones. It is the colonies last ditch effort to spread their genetics. You can tell a colony is laying worker because there will be 10-20-30 eggs in a cell vs. a queen which lays a single egg/cell.