Inspection 5-31-2010

First of all, Happy Memorial Day to everyone. We owe a lot to those in the military who paid the ultimate price to give us the freedoms we have.

I took the opportunity today to inspect the home hives.

Brown Hive

It's been about a week since I installed the new queen into the Brown Hive. I was interested in seeing what she had done thus far. I wasn't disappointed:

EGGS! Yep, that's right, she's layin' eggs like she should. There were a couple of frames which had eggs in them, and I am very happy. In about 3 weeks the population should get a big jump as the bees emerge from the capped cells. Unfortunately, it'll be about another 3 weeks after that before those bees become foragers, which will be after the main nectar flow. But I will be happy if this hive makes it strong into the fall and winter.

Green Hive

Good ol' green hive is doing well. Here are some frames of larvae and capped brood in this hive:

The bees have done very little with the honey super I put on the top. I found out that they are filling up a couple of the deep frames in the top box and using that for honey storage instead. So I may be spinning out a deep frame or two. Remember that after I made the split, I put some empty frames up in the upper deep.

The main flow hasn't really started I think, so there is still time for them to kick into gear.

The Nucs

It's early to see any eggs from any new queens in the nucs, but I did a check to make sure they weren't running out of food. I see lots of foraging going on, but wanted to make sure. Well, I didn't have anything to worry about. They still have the frame of nectar and pollen almost full, and are filling up the (formerly filled with) brood frame, which is now empty after the bees were born. Plus, there were plenty of bees in the hive - almost every frame had a good number of bees on it.

I put in an empty frame with no foundation in each nuc when I created the nucs, to see what the bees would do. Well, they are going to town making wax for that frame; take a look at a frame from the brown nuc:

The one in the gray nuc looks similar. Hopefully they will leave this comb for the queen to lay, assuming she is there. I haven't seen a queen in either nuc, but I didn't look real close. It's a tad early to expect eggs.

But I did see something strange in the gray nuc:

Toward the bottom you see two supercedure queen cells. I made this nuc back on May 16^th when I pulled over a frame with a swarm cell. If there happened to be a brand new egg on that frame, it is conceivable that there could be a queen cell here (and about ready to hatch), but I don't know why they would make them if there was already a swarm cell in the nuc. Since the purpose of me making these nucs is to get new queen, I'm going to leave these alone to see what happens. Now that I know that the nucs have plenty of food, I'm going to leave them alone for a few weeks (famous last words!).