Regicide

We encountered a bee problem again: a weak queen. So we've ousted her and replaced her with a new, hopefully more powerful queen. The new queen is small though, so we're slightly concerned her reign may not be much better than the incumbent's. I've tried to photograph the new and the old queens for you but they're always on the move and their attendants get in the way, so I only have one decent shot to share. They come in a small box with about 4 attendants and are plugged with sugar that they eat away to slowly be released into the new hive. That allows the bees to reorient themselves with the new queen's scent so that they accept her.

Ousted queen can be spotted by her large blue marking

Most queens are marked with a dot, as explained in this previous post about queens, but this new queen is not. We are not thrilled about that because combined with her small size she will be very difficult to spot.

The original queen cost $100 and came with 3 pounds of bees. Since we already had a mostly established hive and just a weak queen we had the option to either 1) combine the failing hive with our more successful one and hope they winter over or 2) buy another queen for $30. We opted for the latter option and have our fingers crossed she begins laying a lot in the next week or so. We'll keep you posted!