This hive visit I was accompanied by
M., a dear-beekeeping, coffee-drinking, secret-confidant friend. All of this
report is a result of your help. We saw a beautiful queen in the “abandonded”
hive I’ve been working to save, as well as the yellow queen in the hive that
she has given me. All in all it was a lovely day. Followed up with organic
grape wine spritzer, crackers and cheese. Cheese and crackers got all muddy.
On the East hive (blue brood box),
we added a honey super with a queen excluder but we didn't see an impressive
wall-to-wall brood pattern. The bees are calm, and we saw all stages of brood.
They're bringing in pollen and nectar so this is a good hive.
On the Eastside Nuc: It's building
out nicely and doing well. I might add a second nuc box on top of it next
week or so depending upon how things look.
The Yellow Queen (nuc) Hive, was the
rehive I nuc’3e with the Yellow Queen. It seems to want to requeen. There were
a couple of queen cups but still has an OK brood pattern, just a little spotty.
And, it has a lot of drone brood which indicates that she might be failing.
North hive, this was the original
box the yellow queen was in but was allowed to requeen. It's building out quite
nicely. It may be ready for a queen excluder and super within a week or two.
T.'s hive nuc, I also call the
Southside Nuc, had a lovely brood pattern. We moved frames around to
checkerboard them and to encourage the build out of foundation. I’ll possibly
add a second nuc box on top or rehive to a 10-frame, if they're that strong.
This box could use a frame of drawn comb so that the queen has room to lay.
Note to self: Look in the freezer.
The Southside Hive had the honey super
put on last week. They are already beginning to put nectar up there. None of
the frames have been drawn out yet. The brood box still has two or three blanks
that have a little bit of foundation drawn out so we moved them around to
encourage build out.
