It was a day to go into the hives. Doug Shaw and I went into the hive at Clarence Brown's. The super is pretty much full of honey, so I added another. We checked. There are now at least 4 swarm cells developing. Just like last time, they are in dangerous places with a lot of burr comb built around them. I am just going to let them swarm this time.
I looked at the yellow hive, the one in which we caught the recent swarm. It seems to be doing nicely. The queen is laying and there are already capped brood.
The blue hive on the other hand was just plain nasty. I had to put on gloves. I could only see a little brood and the only thing that was capped were drone cells. I either have a drone laying queen, or a worker turned queen who is laying unfertilized eggs. They have put away a lot of honey, but there was so much in the brood box that there was just a wee little space for any more.
I did this inspection on my own and then called Doug. We called Larry Tate (actually talked to his wife, Jenna) and arranged to get a new queen. Larry suggested shaking all the bees in the hive out on the ground. A laying worker will be too heavy to get back in the hive. We couldn't see a queen.
We also added a new brood box to the bottom. There is no drawn comb, but a new queen will need space and the existing brood box is essentially a super it has so much hone in it.
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