The hypotenuse of a hexagon divided by pi = (E=MC2)...EURIKA!!! I’ve done it! What was that? That’s not the kind of math we’re talking about? That’s just as well...math was never my strong suit. I’d have been lucky to get a B(ee) 🤦🏻♂️
So what exactly are we talking about when we say “Bee Math”? Well, the life of a bee is extremely ordered. And because of this order there are a number of things we can tell from certain observations. The first and handiest one is that bee eggs hatch in 3 days. The Queen, despite being larger and generally faster that workers and drones, is not always easy to find in a hive with tens of thousands of bees. Although it’s great spotting her, we can tell if there’s a healthy laying queen by spotting eggs. This at least lets us know a queen has been in there and laying within 3 days.
So, I decided to write this because as I was doing a mite treatment my queen died. I opened the hive today to find a dozen queen cells, and my marked queen was nowhere to be found. So I start applying what I know and working to figure out when I’ll have a laying queen in my hive again: a queen cell is capped 8 days after the initial egg is laid (all the queen cells were capped)...the queen will emerge on the 16th day, and should be mated and laying eggs by the 28th day. Given that the cells are capped, which happens on day 8 and the queen will be laying on day 28, I should be 20 days away from being queen right again in hive one.
~ Chris, The Boxing Beekeeper