We three queens!!

Dear all
 
We have now received reports that we have three queens hatched, all from queen 61. Unfortunately this queen died but because she had already laid queen larvae and pupae they have been cared for by the workers of that colony. We hope that still more will come through from this nest. Many of the subt colonies are now outside foraging on red clover, this is hoped will give the colonies a further push for development. Fresh, good quality pollen is needed by this bee species and by providing this we hope we are giving them the best chance of developing new healthy queens.
 
I will also be giving a talk down at RSPB Dungeness on Sunday the 13th March from 3-4pm, do come along if you can make it.
 
Till next time....

---

Got a cool Hotmail story? Tell us now

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

Subt workers and males

Dear all

We are really pleased to announce we now have four subt colonies with workers, and some even have with males. A big thank you to Rosemary who has worked so hard on the rearing. Sam her daughter (who helped collect the queens) had taken these photos for us. As yet we don't know if any queens will be produced, we just have to wait and keep everything crossed for them. Certainly to date the rearing has proved much more successful than we ever would have thought. We have learned so much about subt from collecting them in the field through to rearing them. We hope we can continue this great work for the years to come....

Keep posted, till next time

Subt's are hatching!!

Dear all

We have some good news. Three of our queens have hatched out males and workers. Here's a picture of queen number 30, she's on the right with a newly hatched male next to her. Seven other colonies have good larval development. It's a bit of a waiting game to see if/how many queens are produced, all we can do is keep our fingers crossed. So far we are very please with the breeding results, over half our queens have produced eggs, and many of these have gone on to lay larvea. Some are still catching up.

Keep your fingers crossed

Till next time Nikki