The strongest hive is really busy today. It's 72F/22C and sunny with light wind. I can see fireweed blooming across the river on the hill and the shoreline over there is covered with yellow irises, and there is probably still some mock orange blooming around here. There hasn't been hardly any bees in the clover and there's lots of it.
I also installed the porch roofs on the other two hives and raised this one up to the top.
The north hive. This is the upper half of the vertical split that had the original queen from the 2023 swarm. This hive had a fire drill swarm on May 13 and I found a queen crawling on the ground which I put into the empty hive the next day with a frame of bees from this hive.
This hive was just starting to build comb in the upper deep. 2 weeks ago I saw a queen returning from a flight. When I checked the next day I could hear a queen piping.
The south hive looked really good. This is the lower half of the vertical split without a queen. The upper deep was mostly nectar and capped honey but there was some brood and it seemed solid.
This is the hive that had a fire drill swarm on May 1, which I suspect was the new queen going out on a mating flight since the timing lined up since the split for that.
This is the strongest hive now.
A slow video of the slow hive today.
Checked hives today. The found on the ground too many times queen hive, which I call "empty", is growing slowly. I made a dividing board out of corrugated plastic sign material to restrict them to 6 frames. I've been feeding them again this week and it hasn't looked like any robbing taking place.
A slow video of the entrance to this hive today.
This is the "North" hive, which might have the old queen in it if she wasn't killed by a new queen. I didn't see her the last time I checked it but it was about 2 bees deep on every frame before I added another brood box.
#beekeeping #apiary #HiveCheck #bees #beehive #SlowBees #HoneyBees
This is the "South" hive, or the lower half of the vertical split. I checked it the other day and they're building comb and there was some larvae in the upper deep, and I found a queen and caught and marked her. I didn't check the lower box once I found the queen, so I'll check in a week or two and see how the laying pattern is to know if she got bred from another colony.
#beekeeping #apiary #HiveCheck #bees #beehive #SlowBees #HoneyBees
Tom