Hive Inspections

Doug Shaw and I went into our hives. We looked at the two in my yard on Friday. The goal of looking in the yellow hive was to see if the bees have drawn comb so the queen could start laying. (I only had two frames of drawn comb when I captured the swarm.) Not much had been drawn. I gave them a whole load of syrup in the top frame to help them get started. The queen seemed active although I didn't see any eggs or larvae yet.

The purpose for looking in the blue hive was to see if we could see the new queen or evidence of the queen laying. We didn't see either. However, this hive continues to be very active at bringing in pollen and was very calm, not disturbed at all by the invasion. I took off the top feeder because the comb was well drawn. Doug was going to Brushy Mountain Bee Farm Saturday to get supplies. I asked him to pick up a replacement queen if he could, but they had none. I guess I need to wait and revisit the hive. It is still possible that there is a new queen there. She may not yet have mated or may have just begun laying eggs, which would be hard to see at this date (less than a week out from the swarm). If worse does come to worse, we can always find a freshly laid frame from some other hive and transplant it. They could make their own queen, although we would lose a lot of the spring nectar flow. The only other thing we did was move the honey laden frames in the brood box to the outside. In case there is a queen, it will help keep her from moving up to the super.

Today I went in to the hive at Clarence Brown's. Wow, this hive has grown significantly since I saw it last. The queen had moved up into the super and had laid prodigiously. The hive was pretty crowded and there were brood cells in between the brood box and the super. Many of these got ripped open when I inspected the frames in the super. (Sorry small animals.) There was a swarm cell, but it appeared empty (not filled yet, but clearly not a break out cell.) I am of the opinion that this hive will swarm in the near future, but without a larva in the swarm cell, I wasn't ready to split it. I warned Clarence to be on the lookout. This hive came back from being weak at the end of the winter. The queen has done a really good job of building the colony. I added a super, separated from the rest with a queen excluder. (I put it on like Kurt Brower does, sideways. Evidently this allows the workers to get up to the top easier but generally keeps the queen out because she won't go to the edges of the hive.)

No hive had much honey yet. Mostly, they had just stored around the brood areas.