The East hive. This would technically be the oldest hive since the OG queen moved here with a split, or maybe after I caught a queen wandering around after the split which I suspect was the old queen since I probably split them days before they would have swarmed or she couldn't fly good enough to swarm.. whatever, she was here and generally I'd say it's been the best hive but a bit swarmy. Lots of drones in this photo.
5/5 🏁
The White hive. Not much to say about it, I think it swarmed twice or more last year so I suppose it doesn't really have much character.
The Center hive. This hive always has lots of bees, and swarmed once last year so maybe the slight meanness of some bees went with that queen. It was like 1 of 100 bees would just hit you and sting you, no warning, when checking them.
The Green hive. This is the part of the split with the queen from the East hive. It's activity is picking up every day as more foragers take flight. They have a green 4 leaf clover and a water trough to help ID the hive and for other bees to see sooner it's not their hive. I noticed a lot of drift from other hives landing or almost landing before realizing it wasn't their hive.
The West hive. These bees seem to be smaller. They could just be young bees but I've seen the small ones bringing in pollen. They seem healthy and didn't have any issues over the winter. This was a swarm caught July 17 last year and combined here since this box had swarmed and I probably cleared out it's queen cell when checking things.
The East hive has lots of bees and some queen cells and also some brood that hasn't hatched yet. This is all in the bottom box of a 2 deep box hive.
The hive split seems like it will be successful!
I checked the hives that were split 13 days ago. The Green hive that got the top box from East has lots of fresh brood so the queen was moved. This is the best scenario since most of the foragers would of went back to the other hive. I started seeing some new foragers in the last few days. Drones started flying 6 days ago.
The moved box of bees has hatched some drones and is slowly eating their fondant and pollen patty. They seemed pretty calm so maybe the queen was in this box. It's on top of the bottom box of a dead out that I left 4 frames with honey in plus the empty brood comb. It came from a full hive that received a full box of honey as the new upstairs. No foraging but I have seen them do cleansing flights and then return.
The bees are busy and still bringing in yellow pollen. Probably pussywillow, the elders claim to have picked them when they were young 'somewhere' here.
#beekeeping #bees #pollen #beehive #March26 #apiary #BeeMovie #pollinators
Tom
AskPippa🇨🇦