Laurence Edwards tours a Lagustica Italian queen that exploded from a 2-frame split to filling a double brood box in just 3-4 weeks. The queen's orange coloration and prolific laying show why these bees, available through Melitta Bees, are prized for rapid colony growth.
Right now I've been going around Richard's apiary and saying, what else can we film? And he showed me this colony here, which is a lagustica colony that he introduced a queen about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and it was only on a couple of frames of brood. What's amazing is just how quickly this queen has taken off and pretty much filled up this double panes brood box after a single round of brood. Lagustica queens get very, very big very quick, bumper honey crops, There's a couple of them dotted around in this apiary. In today's video, I'm going to show you just how quick they built up from a 2-frame split 4 weeks ago. So what we've got here is a double-frame Payne's nuc made up 4 weeks ago. Top box was added less than a week ago, and you can see that already that first frame there taken out has been completely drawn out. Top box was added with just foundation, and this is pretty impressive. That was a 2-frame split 4 weeks ago. The Lagustica queens lay like crazy, build up very, very strong. The weather's been good here, lots of sunshine, ideal flow conditions. And to think that that went in a week ago and it was just foundation— very impressive indeed. So Richie's just shown me there the Lagustica queen. You can see that, look how orange she is. No banding whatsoever, little black This is a really good quality, very well-mated Italian Lagustica queen. Now we can get these queens through Melitta Bees. We don't advertise them on the website because it's quite difficult to get hold of a decent number of them. If you do want to order a batch of say 10 or 25, we can get them in, but it is by special order only. Richard is a massive fan of these due to the fact that they build up really, really strong, give him lots of brood to work with, and they make a huge, huge amount of honey. Right, let's have a look at that bottom box then and see how well the queen's laid it up and see the state of some of those frames of brood. So as we said, this was made up 4 weeks ago, a 2-frame split, and it's quite unbelievable to think that they've drawn out that entire top box. All of those bees will have emerged and that queen got to business straight away. And there we go, we can see the beginnings of some lovely capped brood there. So look at that, this here is the second round of brood. And she has laid that up so well. Richard, I have to say, I'm very, very impressed with the amount of brood they've put in here. That queen does not know when to stop. And I can already see down there on the next frame that it's very, very similar. Third frame in. Wall-to-wall brood. And you can just imagine what's going to happen when all of that brood emerges. They are going to need a third, fourth, fifth extension box very, very quickly. So another lovely frame there. That's not spotty brood. They backfilled that with nectar because they were probably restricted before you put the additional extension box on. But I would definitely not frown at that. And then the other side, back to beautiful slabs of worker brood. So there we go, on to the 4th frame of worker brood there out of a 2-frame split that was made 4 weeks ago with a Lagustica queen. And then the last frame out of there, another frame of honey with a decent amount of pollen in it as well. So just talking to Richard there, and I always get my tips from Richard, he just wants to make it clear though, when people are taking apart the boxes is he always thinks that you should be putting them back in exactly the same order and making sure that the frames are put back in the same order as well. The frames aren't always drawn out evenly, and it's very easy to squish bees and squish that queen if they don't go back in the exact same order. I have to say, I'm a little bit lazy with that, but it definitely makes sense, and I always take Richard's advice because it's always good advice. So I've just asked Richard to go back into the top box there because what I noticed that was quite interesting was in the bottom box you either had Full frames of capped brood or full frames of honey. No eggs to be seen, and I reckon we're going to find frames and frames of eggs upstairs where that queen was. Just goes to show, all she wants to do is lay eggs and lay as many eggs as she possibly can. This colony is going to build up so strong. Right, so it shows it's not a setup. We've just been up there and there is literally no eggs whatsoever. So the queen clearly has responded to the fact That she's not got enough worker bees and enough nurse bees at the moment to tend to those eggs, but there's sufficient bees in there in order to keep the brood warm. What I would expect once all of that brood has emerged is that she will go on another egg-laying spree, and then we'll definitely need to get another extension box on this lagustica colony. So there we go, a look inside a lagustica colony that is on its way to being an absolute monster. I'm having such good fun in Richard's apiary today, doing none of the work, just filming. This is how it needs to be going forward.
