I've Never Seen These Queens BEFORE!

This colony of bees here is headed by a 2022 Carpathian queen. I don't know much about the Carpathian line of bees. All I know is that I've got one, and today I'm going to show you what they're like. So I saw this queen advertised on the beekeeping forum. Someone who had some Carpathian queens and wanted to move over to Buckfast coincidentally, and they were just getting rid of some older queens. And I thought, well, I've not had a Carpathian queen before. I don't know anything about them. So why not try one? Stick her in a nucleus with some frames and feeders foundation and see how she does. I thought that would be a pretty cool video. I introduced the queen maybe six weeks ago, five or six weeks ago now, so we should just about get to the point where we can see some of her offspring. What will be interesting in this video is to see if we can see the difference between the Buckfast offspring and the Carpathian offspring as well. I'll give you a nice close-up of the queen, and I'll show you some of these frames and feeders frames as well because this colony here is doing very, very well indeed. Indeed. Let's get inside, see what we've got. So first off, we've got a lovely frame of stores. Not all of the colonies here have that much stores, so that's really, really good to see. And classic Frames and Feeders style, they've not taken it down to the corners, but hopefully they'll fix that next year. And then on that side as well, we've got lots and lots of stores. Really nice to see the bees using these Frames and Feeders frames. And looking at the bees on this frame here as well, they all look very, very similar. So I'm not sure if I'm looking at the Buckfast or I'm looking at the Carpathian. Hmm. Right, so I've just shaken all the bees off the frame. They're not violently coming up for me there. So starting to see some really, really nice brood being drawn on this frame here. And this is definitely the Carpathian brood because I know that I've seen the queen in here. She is marked yellow as a 2022 queen. And then just to show you on the other side, they're not being 100% drawn out well on those frames and feeders frames. So I'm not going to drag that back and scrape it off and let them start again just yet, but if they continue doing it like that, maybe that's the way this one's going to be going. You see it on that side, really, really nice kind of nice brood comb shape, and then you see it on that side there and it's just slightly different, but I'm going to give the bees and the frames here the benefit of the doubt. So this is an interesting frame here. You can really start to see a little bit of diversity in this frame, and I remember, I don't know why I said they were Buckfast, they're not Buckfast in this one. This was a Swarm that I caught, and it was quite a dark swarm. So the darker bees that you can see there, they are the kind of mongrel genetics that you get from around here. And then the orange banded bees there, all of them, they are the Carpathian bees. And I'll kind of hold them up against my face there, maybe give them a tap, and you can see they're pretty chilled, like really nice chilled calm bees. I don't really have any plans for this. I'm not kind of thinking I'm going to use it to maybe flood an area with drones or anything like that. I can't can't do that even if I want. I've only got the one queen. But it's nice to see and try different genetics. And these ones here do seem very, very nice, calm, placid bees. So you can see there where the bees are starting to work that plastic foundation and build it down. And then you can see where the queen is actively laying as soon as the bees have drawn that out. I do find with these frames that the bees struggle to keep up with the frames in order for the queen to lay at her maximum capacity. Now, that shouldn't be an issue in later years once it's all drawn out. Definitely an issue in terms of buildup of the frames and the buildup of the colony in that first year though. Still not found that queen, but as you can see, really lovely calm bees. So nothing on that frame there, and again, the bees are struggling a little bit to draw that out. Maybe going to give this colony a feed just to get them kick-started. You can see it on that camera there as well. Nothing wrong with what's being drawn out, but it's just a bit slow for my liking. I'm really hoping that come next year these will come into their own. Interesting observation there. This is the only frame that I've found so far where they've chucked in a little bit of drone brood on there. Not much at all, but you can see the beginnings of some open drone brood on that side of the frame. Right, so on to the last frame there. Beautiful frame, and there is our Carpathian queen. Very dark, similar look to a Carniolan. I think it does actually share some genetics with the Carniolan, although I am no expert and I could be corrected. I could give you all the details, but all I would be doing is just reading from Google. I am no expert on this breed whatsoever. All I know is I've got one. Take a look at the brood on that side though. Really beautiful brood pattern. And as I said before, very, very calm, gentle bees. So there's the queen coming up for a little photo shoot there. Really, really nice, stunning queen. Long abdomen, but not very orange at all. Unusual banding. You don't often see banding and segmentation quite like that. Very different to a Buckfast queen. And you can see she's marked yellow, so she's a 2022 queen. So hopefully she'll do all right next year. And then if she does all right, we might get some more just to see how they go. But she's a very, very good-looking queen, and I'm just quite excited to see how they do. So there we go, one Carpathian queen. I'm going to put this frame back now. Have any experience with Carpathian Queens? Definitely stick it in the comments. And if there's any other lines that you'd be interested in me not only stocking but doing some videos on, stick that in the comments as well.