First subt queen to hatch

Dear all

Here is the picture of our first subt queen to hatch. She came from queen 61! She's looking quite pale in these photo's as she has just emerged but will darken over the next few days. We are incredibility pleased to see her and know we are doing something right with subt's rearing. Unfortunately we have had a couple of set backs. Queen 61 died a few days ago, thankfully she has laid some queen eggs, her workers are now looking after the egg/larvae/pupae so we are confident some will hatch out. It's quite unusual for a queen to die once she has started a colony- subt are testing us at every opportunity but we have made significant progress and are hopeful for the future. We knew the bees would be hard to breed and we have 21 queens remaining (which is excellent) all in different stages of progress. Obviously I am hoping for enough queens for a release this summer.

Till next time................
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The Sunday Times Scottish University of the Year 2009/2010
The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland,
number SC 011159.