We were finally able to inspect our hives after all the rain. Our first priority was to check on the hive we combined and were trying to requeen. Status = failure. Our requeening efforts were not successful. Upon opening the hive we discovered some new capped brood, but no new eggs and no sight of the queen. Then we saw this…
An emerging queen!! Something we have never seen before. Very exciting!!
Then we realized she was damaged. Not good! She was missing her right wing and did not look good in general.
But we have hope, we found about 10 more queen cells in this same hive from the new brood that was laid, so we are pretty sure we will have another new queen within a week.
Lots of queen cells
As we continued checking our swarm nucs, we saw some good progress going on. The burr comb we attached to a frame with rubber bands was fully built and already had honey.
And finally, we saw the new queen of this nuc, very large and impressive.
Beelievable 
How amazing to see a queen emerging. But sad that she was damaged. Do you have any theories on what caused the damage? It looked like the workers had chewed through the side of the cell so maybe they damaged her? Or varroa mites?
The new queen in the nuc looks stunning, one of the longest I’ve ever seen. In colour she’s much more like my own dark queens.
Hi Emily! We believe either a previous queen or a worker chewed through the side and possibly damaged her. There is no sight of varroa mites in the hive. The new queen in the nuc is also the longest I have seen. Thanks for checking out my blog!
What a great experience for you. Nice work on capturing the emergence