queen me.

Apparently raising bees is not as easy as one thought...and by one, I mean we. As is turns out our bees have been very busy. Busy making honey and busy doing other things, like raising queens. We were told that bees make queen cells when they are feeling cramped or when the queen is past her prime. Since our bees were neither of these things we thought we had nothing to worry about. Our bees had new digs with 20 new frames to work in! They had only built out a little under half of those twenty so they were in a small 2 bedroom working up to a mansion estate. Also they were with a new queen. They had only swarmed to our place with the newbie (who we call(ed) Heather) two months ago so again, no worries here. Oh how wrong we were. Today when we opened up the hive to inspect we found 7! opened queen cells and one capped. Also a hive that was around half the size of its former self. Ughs. Our bees as it turns our are just a wee bit needy. We've called the professionals in the area to try and figure out what went wrong, but in the meantime I've posted some photos. How many queen cells can you spot? Try not to be distracted by the full frames of tasty dripping honey.