Victoria's Blog Debut!

Happy Friday, everyone! 

I had a very unexpected happiness fill me today. Tim, my mentor, had purchased more sugar for the bee juice and I went by his house to get it. I didn't have my bee suit with me so I had no intention of doing an inspection today. Wearing shorts without a full suit to do an inspection isn't something I want to try anytime soon. My girls are pretty docile, usually, but I've seen them sting so I wanted to be covered. Tim says, "hey I have bee pants!" Of course he does! So even though I'd never heard of them before, I slipped them on over my shorts. The jacket and veil were donned and off we went with  a smoker to check out the girls!

My only concern today was to see if they had moved up into the 2nd brood box. Tim pulled up one of the middle frames to see how much was drawn out. It looked pretty good! There were two drawn frames in the new box so it should only be a couple weeks now before we can get to some honey production! 

HOWEVER, the biggest and bestest surprise came when Tim pulled out the second frame and saw Victoria on the bottom of the frame! This is her first blog appearance!

Ladies and Gents, may I present Queen Victoria! As you can see, she's much bigger than the other girls. Her body doesn't have stripes like the worker and drone bees and her wings only come halfway down her body, whereas, worker bees' wings are generally the length of their bodies.

You can see her short wings better in this photo. She is always surrounded by her royal court who constantly feed her and clean up after her. She is big and beautiful and I'm so thrilled she came out for a photo today!

So my day was made! I saw they had moved up to their new box and her royal badness came up as well. It was a very good day! Time to make more juice for the girls! Have a great weekend!

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝