Coming Together

About half of my equipment came in.  I love it when I come home to find a big box from Mann Lake before the shipping notice has even made it to my email inbox!  I have three deep boxes, plus frames and foundation to go in them.  I'll admit here that putting together frames is probably my very least favorite part of beekeeping.  I can't wait until my kiddo is old enough that I can pay him to do it.  I'm still waiting on the resource hive from Brushy Mt., but I've got what I need for right now.

The queen that was in the queenless half of the green hive has been released.  I didn't find her, but I found 5 sealed queen cells.  I'm not sure if they are trying to supercede her or if they thought they had gone queenless.  I cut them out and I'll check them in a week to see if there is uncapped brood.  If there is then we're all good.  Otherwise I'll give them a frame with eggs on it.  I gave them a second deep of foundation to work with.

The other new queen was uncaged and walking around.  For the record, marked queens are freaking awesome!  I much prefer raising my own queens, but I may have to learn how to mark my queens.  Their population is a little lower than I'd like, so I think the plan of transferring them into the nuc hive when it gets here is the right thing to do.  I'm sure that they will not be pleased about being moved twice in two weeks, but it is what it is.  

I think I'll end up shuffling some of this equipment around when everything gets here.  The colony with the marked queen is going to go into the resource hive when it gets here and the orange box that they are in now will be used as the second deep for the other orange box.

The two hives on the left have new queens and the white hive is raising a queen.