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| He's not quite sure he trusts the veil. |
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| Seeing Her Majesty |
In the backyard, I found signs that the white hive successfully created a queen. To of the three queen cells are torn open from the side, indicating that a rival queen killed them off. I'm hoping that will mean no afterswarms. The bees have also cleared out an area for the new queen to lay. If you recall, this hive was terribly honeybound after the last requeening attempt, so I think this might be a good sign. I did give them a donor frame from the green nuc to help boost their numbers until the new queen starts laying.
The light green hive is doing what it is that they do. Three frames of foundation have been drawn out up top. I'd like to see a little more activity out of them, but we'll give them another week or so before I make a decision about a donor frame.
The orange hive is going nuts. I didn't go all the way to the bottom box, but I saw at least 5 frames of brood in the top box and all but two of the frames in the top box has been drawn out. I ran out of frames and the top box only has 9 frames in it. I'll remedy that ASAP, but I hope it doesn't cause too many problems until then. I gave them a super to start filling out. We may get some honey yet this year.
The Auburn nuc is starting to draw out foundation. They've pulled in a LOT of pollen. They've still got 3 frames of foundation to work with, so I think they'll be okay for a couple of weeks.
The green nuc has 5 frames (out of 8) of brood in all stages. I took one of those frames as a donor frame for hive two and gave them new foundation to work on. After I was finished I started noticing a lot of bees crawling around, unable to fly. I had seen this a couple of weeks ago, but it had cleared up after the white hive was treated with OAV. But, this time some of them have DWV and K-wing. So, I've got a mite problem to deal with. I suspect that it's coming from the green nuc because they came from the white hive and haven't had a brood break. I did an alcohol wash, but something went very wrong and I only found two mites.
The only good thing about this is that I finally get to test out a theory that I've been working on. I picked up these plastic push-in cages a few months back. They are like 2.5" x 3" and the spaces between the bars are big enough for workers to get in, but not for the queen to get out. It's a queen jail. So, I'll use that to isolate the queen for 18 days and the release her and treat with OAV six days after that. (18 days + 6 days = the 24 days that it will take for most brood to hatch out and new brood not be capped yet). I lucked out and found the queen on a frame full of honey and jailed her there. If this works then I'll figure out the best time to apply this idea to other hives. My initial thoughts are right after I pull honey, which usually happens around the 4th of July.
In the outyard, it's a lot of business as usual. The hive in the new stand is bearding outside a good bit. I thought that might mean that they would need a super, but upon opening it up, I found that only about 6 frames were drawn out in the top box so I think the super needs to wait for another week or two. I didn't go into the bottom box, but found open brood in the top box so the queen is there. The hive in the old stand has successfully raised a queen. I saw her and some capped and uncapped brood. The top box only had 2-3 frames of foundation drawn out. It might be worth giving them a donor frame when I have one available.
I'm starting to see lots of clover on the side of the road, thought it doesn't seem to be blooming at the house yet. The bees are still hitting the spiderwort pretty hard in the mornings before moving on to other things. I'm seeing lots of activity, but less pollen than a few weeks ago. So far, the flow seems less intense than it was last year, but we've gotten more rain so hopefully we'll have a longer flow than last year.
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