Two weeks after the formation of the maternaty colonies, the young queens are laying eggs, provided that the wedding flights have taken place, the matings have been successful and they have not been eaten by the bird afterwards and have also found their way back to the correct flight hole.

Today the garden beekeeper checked the colonies for eggs ("pens"). If eggs were available, the queen was picked, greeted and drawn with a red dot (annual colour for 2018). A small, painless surgical intervention prevents the queen from swarming with her colony the next summer.

Preliminary results: 12 of 28 noble larvae have developed into queens, of which 8 were successfully mated and went in laying eggs.

In the next step the old queens from 2017 will be exchanged for the new ones from 2018.