This being a holiday from work, I decided to look into the hives in back. But first, my wife and I were out in the backyard in the morning the day before, and there were lots of dragonflies flitting around (we have lots of them). There was one flying around us and a certain plant - he/she would land on the plant for a few seconds, then take off.
I told my wife to stand by the plant and hold her hand out away from her body, and the dragonfly may land on it. Sure enough, it did. It stayed there about 10 seconds of so before going off on another adventure. Neat!
Nuc Checks
A quick check of the nucs revealed:
- Brown Nuc - saw the queen and marked her (yellow dot).
- Blue Nuc - no sign of a queen, but could be she isn't mated yet. Still need to give time.
- White Nuc - still on the decline. I haven't done anything with it. Still trying to determine what I will do.
- Grey Nuc - no queen, I moved a frame of eggs and brood from the Brown Hive to give it a boost.
Green Hive
The green hive has a ton of bees in it! The super on top is well on the way to being filled with honey. Here are some shots:
Still need to wait until more is capped.
While inspecting the hive, I accidentally caused some honey to spill on the top of some of the frames. I think it's real cute to watch the bees recover the spilled honey. They don't let anything go to waste!
Good brood pattern as well:
As I said,this hive has a ton of bees. This is after I was inspecting a couple of frames, and there were a bunch of bees on the frames. Made it a challenge to move things around.
Since the weather has been hot, the bees have taken to hanging out on the front porch each evening, and into the night.
Pink Hive
Opened up the Pink hive, and this is what I found - uh oh!!!
Another case of the dreaded Laying Worker! (*sigh*) I can't get a break. This is a different case than the swarm I captured in the white nuc - I didn't have much time/effort invested in that hive, so I wasn't worried about laying workers. But this is a full size hive. I decided to take Michael Bush's advice and add a frame of eggs and brood from another hive each week for a few weeks, and see if the hive would right itself.
Brown Hive
Earlier I had noticed that the Brown Hive had superceded her queen - either by a swarm or just supercedure, I am not sure. Well today I was able to find and mark the queen with her own yellow dot!
Lots of bees and good pattern in this hive, but to date they haven't touched the honey super.
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