Queen Aura – born in 2024, overwintered with colony, and is mother to all the worker bees as well as all the queens in 2025.Using a specialized grafting tool to gentle scoop tiny larva from a frame and place it in special cups that will be used by the bees to make queen cells.A very small larva that will grow into a mighty queen surrounded by royal jelly.Tray of queen cups, capped. Inside, queens slowly develop while the colony keeps them warm.Close-up of the capped queen cells.Transferring a queen cell from the bar to a queenless nuc.Small nucleus colony (or “nuc” – pronounced “newk”). This colony is queenless and given one of the queen cells to raise.Closer image of the queen cell tucked in between frames of the nuc.Close-up of the cell between frames.Beeyard with large, 2 chamber mother colony in the corner, and four nucs spread around, raising new queens.Checking the cell a few days later shows evidence that the queen has chewed her way out and emerged from the cell.Another angle of the opened cell.
George Bassler’s Perpetual Motion Machine
