In this vlog, beekeeping enthusiast Laurence Edwards inspects his F0 breeder queen nucleus after a week of warm weather. He finds the colony jam‑packed with bees but discovers no queen, eggs, larvae, or capped brood. After two thorough checks and adding a frame of eggs to confirm, he concludes the queen is lost, which is confirmed when emergency queen cells are observed throughout the nucleus. While dealing with a painful sting to his nose, he explains the implications: a likely two‑week setback to his queen‑rearing schedule. He contacts the breeder, who offers a replacement queen from the same line, and outlines his contingency strategy of maintaining a diverse stock of breeder queens (Lutz German, Danish Buckfast, etc.) to avoid total loss. Edwards reflects on the frustration of the incident, the lesson of not putting all eggs in one basket, and his plan to move forward with a new breeder queen.
Chapters
So I'm here at the F0 breeder queen colony and I've got some really, really bad news. So about a week ago I came into this colony to take a look, see how they were getting on. It's my F0 breeder queen, so obviously I really, really want to make sure that she's getting through the winter well. I opened up the box and it was absolutely jam-packed full of bees. I thought, perfect, this is what we want to see. If anything, it was definitely too full. Completely full to the brim, 6 frames of bees clustering up in the feeder, clustering up at the bottom. This is where I want my F0 breeder queen to be at this time of year. I was concerned though, definitely concerned, because they didn't have enough space. And then this is last week, so we had a week of really, really nice weather, and the last thing that I wanted to happen was I was going to lose my F0 breeder queen early in the year, back end of March, because I didn't give them enough So I wanted to get into the colony to do 2 very important things. The first one was to find the queen and to clip the queen, just to make sure that— just to make sure that— just to make sure that if they were in a position to swarm, then I wouldn't completely lose that F0 breeder queen, and she'd either cluster up underneath the nuc and I could come back and collect her. The second thing was going to be that I was going to give her some additional space, so I was going to add on a brood extension box Because they were so jam-packed that I just couldn't take the risk that they were going to run out of space. So I searched through the frames, I went through every single frame, couldn't find the queen. I thought, this is very strange, she's definitely marked, she should be easy to find. What was even more strange though with this colony, considering how big it was, is that there were no eggs, no larvae, no capped brood, nothing. I was very, very worried, so I went through every single frame a couple of times, which I wouldn't normally do at this time of year, but it was a very warm day. And I couldn't find the queen at all. So I closed them back up. I thought, you know what, I'm just going to leave them to it. I'll come back in 24 hours and I'll check again. 24 hours later, I came back, I checked again, and I still couldn't find the queen. So in order to completely satisfy my mind that there's no queen in that colony, I added a frame of eggs. And I'm back here today to check to see whether they've drawn out those cells. I'm 99.9% sure they are going to have drawn out those cells. And what that means is that I have lost my F— That's it. Ah, ah, ah, ah, that really hurt. I have lost my F0. Ah, ah, that really hurt. Well, that was a very, very painful sting right on the end of the nose. Absolutely blasted. Oh my God, my eyes are watering. But what that means is that I've lost my F0 breeder queen. What an absolute nightmare. Luckily, I've spoken to the breeder. He's got another very, very similar F0 breeder queen from the same line. He's gonna send that one up to me. So all is not lost. Probably gonna set me back a couple of weeks in terms of the rearing. I've got my Lutz German queen. I've got a couple of Danish Buckfast queens as well. First couple of rounds will go out. We're gonna replace this F0 breeder queen. But today we're gonna get inside and we are gonna confirm whether that queen is there or if she's been lost. So I'm definitely gonna get my bee suit on after taking that absolute belting sting to the nose. Let's get inside, see if we can find that queen. Right, I'm 99.9% sure that we're gonna find queen cells in here, which means that there is no more F0 breeder queen. I've got my fingers crossed though for an absolute miracle. Let's get inside, see what they're looking like. So there we go, this is what the nucleus is looking like. And you look at it and you think, wow, what a big, strong nucleus of bees. Really nice and friendly, big and strong, no drones, definitely not dwindling, definitely queen right. It's only when you start to dig a little bit below the surface that you realize something is massively wrong. I really hope I'm going to prove myself wrong in this video and we're going to find the queen walking around strutting her stuff. I have to say, I've got no confidence in that whatsoever though. And there we go, the proof is in the pudding. I am devastated. Look, they've made emergency queen cells, they've made loads of them. I can't believe it. I am so annoyed with myself. Not that I've necessarily done anything wrong, but it's just one of those things. It happens. You have to kind of suck it up. Still doesn't mean that it's not really, really annoying. So how incredibly annoying is that? I did the review of the Breeder Queen. I did 3 updates. You can see inside that colony there. Nothing's happened. I've not killed the queen. They've not turned it into emergency cells. She has just gone. Something's happened to her, completely out of my control. Luckily the queen rearer has come back and said that he can get me a replacement really early in the season from exactly the same line, so I've probably lost a maximum of about 2 weeks of this year's queen rearing operation. Luckily I keep a good stock of breeder queens. Do not put all of your eggs in one basket. I've learned that before the hard way, and it kind of validates the decision with this happening so early in the year to keep a good stock of breeder queens each year, and I'll continue to do that, bringing in different breeder queens from different operations run them in my apiary, and it means that you've got a little bit of a contingency and a fallback if something goes wrong. The breeder queens that I've got as a contingency are fantastic breeder queens, and luckily I'm going to get that replacement in and it's only going to set me back a couple of weeks. So what an absolutely rubbish start to the season! The F0 breeder queen is dead. If you want to check out how amazingly good she was at the end of last year— doesn't really matter anymore though, does it? But check out this video here. She was a beauty. She's now dead. I'm going to get myself another one. We're going to move on.
