Bull City Bees Beekeeping adventures in downtown Durham

Yesterday was the day to check to see if the colony had freed the queen from her marshmallow prison.  I tried to get home a bit early in order to check the bees while it was still light.  Pushing it too far in to the evening runs the risk that all of the bees will be home, so in general, most bee keeping activity occurs mid-day.

After suiting up and getting the smoker going, I went out to the hive, removed the cover, removed the top feeder and went looking for the queen cage.  Now, on Saturday, when we were setting things up, we were a little uncomfortable with just using nails to hold the cage between two frames.  Instead, we tied some yarn around the nails, then taped the yarn to the hive body, leaving the cage to dangle inside the hive.

My recollection was that we had put the cage near the middle, so I was somewhat surprised when the yarn was hanging down between the first and second frames.  Assuming that I must be misremembering, I pushed back the frames and pulled up the string, finding nothing.  Uh oh – the cage must have fallen, I hope the queen is okay.  I peeked at the bottom of the hive there wasn’t a cage between frames 1 and 2.  Nothing between 2 and 3, or 3 and 4.  But between frames 4 and 5, I saw the cage – not on the floor of the hive, but actually glued to the side of frame 4!

I carefully made room and pulled out frame 4.  Sure enough, the queen had been freed.  I flicked the cage off of the frame and closed up the hive.   I’ll post a picture of the opened cage and the “glue” when I get home.