Out of the frying pan...

...And into the heat of an Alabama summer.

Did a check on (almost) all the hives today.  In the outyard, the hive that I have been concerned about has finally started getting rev'ed up.  The pictured frame is like like this front and back.  The pattern isn't going to win any awards, but I think it will be enough to get them through the winter.  The queen has gained some size and has started on a second frame of eggs.  Whew.  I guess the bees really did know what was best.  

  

The new queen has finally gotten busy.

The second hive in the outyard has a virgin queen, pictured below.  They also have an unhatched queen cell.  I left it in and am questioning that decision, but the virgin walked right by it and didn't attempt to cull it.

Another (blurry) queen pic.

In the backyard, the orange hive has filled and capped 7 frames in the super that they were left.  It's very pretty, white capped honey.  I put the escape board down and will pull it tomorrow.  They looked like they were doing a pretty good job of filling the top box.  I didn't see any brood, but it's still a bit early for that.  

In the white hive, the bees were in a very foul mood.  When I opened them up, they poured out of the inner cover and all around me.  One of them found her way into my jacket and a few found a way through my jacket, so I had to put on a second jacket.  That's never a fun thing.  Thankfully, the beekeeping gods were shining down on me because the very first frame I pulled contained eggs, larvae, and capped brood.

The Auburn nuc looked good.  I thought I smelled slimed honey, but didn't see it or really very many SHBs for that matter.  Both sides had a strong population, so maybe I'm just being paranoid.  

The dark green nuc was a mixed bag.  The weaker half finally has a queen.  It's funny because I had to go down to the last frame in the bottom box to find any evidence of a queen.  When I did find it, I could have sworn that I saw multiple eggs in some of the cells.  I know that young queens sometimes release too many eggs at first.  I was seeing two, sometimes three, eggs in a several cells.  Just as I had convinced myself that I had a laying worker, I spotted the queen with her back end stuck down in a cell laying.  

The stronger half of the nuc has apparently either cast a swarm or decided to requeen for some other reason.  I'm thinking swarm because there were about 6 queen cells that were capped (or close to it).  They must have started building these things just after I closed it up last time because I've been keeping an eye out for signs of swarming.  This is the second time this year that I've had a hive swarm after the solstice with seemingly plenty of room left.  This half of the nuc had 3 frames of foundation that they hadn't even started to draw out.  In fact, I'm kind of concerned with the amount of comb that's not being drawn right now.  There is obviously something still coming in.  I've tried feeding twice in the outyard and both times the syrup has fermented before they used it.  So they definitely aren't going hungry.  But at the same time they aren't drawing foundation either.  This is happening in multiple hives, so I just don't know what to think.

I didn't get in the light green hive today due to a close call with heat exhaustion.  I didn't realize until it was too late that the temp had gotten up to about 94 degrees.  I tried to do too much and almost got sick.  Let that be a lesson to you boys and girls.  Drink lots of water and pace yourself.  Don't be like me.