We should name our queens. It would amuse me. What are the names of historic Italian queens? Wikipedia offers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_queens
I think I prefer Rosamund. That will be the hive on the right when looking out from the house. I freed her court from their box.
Chuck gets to choose for the hive on the left since that was the one he got started last week.
We were gone this weekend, taking my middle nephew to a 5K in Charlotte. Since it was cloudy yesterday morning, we didn't try to open the hives to check the queens and it was raining when we got home today. So, tomorrow we will get in there and let who ever needs it out of her little box. Usually you leave them 3 days, but we are trying not to piss them off any more than necessary.
We suspect it will be (insert name here) because Rosamund's crowd have sucked the sugar syrup down to about an inch from the bottom of the bottle. We figure this means she's out and needing feeding. (Insert name here)'s colony has only dropped their syrup about 3 inches, so we think this means she's still subsisting on the fondant in her cage.
From what I can tell through the window, it looks like both colonies are drawing down good comb, but it may just be that the bees are all happy in their clusters and I can't really tell a damn thing.
I have made more syrup for Rosamund's bottle, too.
Rosamund's nice, and the Italianate version or something, of Rosamunda is nice, too....and there's Beatrice, beloved of Dante for your other lady..and Berenice was a queen of ancient times. Maybe Boudicca, if she's particularly feisty.Funny that all my thoughts start with B.
ReplyDeleteBeatrice would make them both Shakespearean, but I like Eleanore, too. But I haven't heard a peep from Chuck yet.
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