Small black queen

[Michael Bush]

One of my splits of small cell bees raised a beautiful small black queen. It's the first queen I've gotten raised by the small cell bees other than a hive I have that I think came from a natural sized swarm. She's very small compared to the big fat ones I've been getting. I had put a brown Russian queen in the hive when I found it queenless, who was gone last I checked and two queen cells were capped. Today she is laying. I'm going to try to get some queens from her.

[Clayton]

Hi Michael,

Were these bees on the wax coated permacomb?

Clay

[Michael Bush]

Yes. The queen cells were off of the bottom of the frame, like a swarm cell, but I think that's becuase they can't tear up the wax on the perma comb to do it on the side.

I'm really loving the PermaComb. The oversized (5.4mm) queens seem to prefer to lay in it, other than one queen who was too fat to lay in my wax coated small cells. I watched her try but she couldn't get herself in them.