Super Queens – 20 July

So I have a hive and a NUC that are in the process of creating their own queens from supercedure cells.  Counting back in the queen calendar from when I first noticed the capped queen cells there should be eggs in the hives today if the virgin queens were successful in their nuptial flights.

I have not been able to see new eggs on a frame (yet).  In an effort to address this shortcoming I decided that I need to try taking digital photographs that I could enlarge and review on my computer.  I haven’t used my digital camera for a couple of years so the project started out digging through drawers and cabinets to get a camera and tripod for the effort.

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Got through the ‘Misty’ NUC without a problem, although trying to operate a camera with my hive gloves on was not the best of experiences, and the propolis!! I got half way through the “Bees Rules” box and the battery on the camera died.  Gurrr…

Well, I had what pictures I had and this was mostly an experiment anyway, so I buttoned the hives back up and headed inside to take a look at the pictures.

It seems that I had grabbed an older Canon digital camera that uses the large format CF cards.  I didn’t have a CF card reader for this form factor.  I tried doing an USB connection with the camera to get to the pictures.  Four hours later I figure out that the drivers for the camera don’t work with Windows 10.  GURRR…

Order CF card reader on Amazon and wait…

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Looks like I got eggs!!  Why are these so easy to see in pictures, but are invisible to the eye???

In fact, it seems that every available cell on every built out frame had eggs in them.  Quite a few actually had more than one egg in the cell, but the eggs were attached to the bottom (not the sides) of the cells.  It would seem that both the main hive and the NUC had successfully made their own queens.

About this time, my wife points out that we have a cute little Nikon digital camera that is more modern than the Canon with a lot higher resolution.  Different camera next time!

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