Today, Kisha and I, my new bee partner in crime, opened the hives with some interesting results. In her hive we found no evidence of a queen. The bees were disorganized, had only drawn out a small amount of comb and were clustering on three frames all the way to the left. We assumed that they either killed her or she may have flown away. In my hives, hive #1, which was brought through the winter was filled with bees, as well as brood, pollen and honey too! They were beginning to work up in the Super as well, but we did find swarm cells! This is very common this time of year with an over wintered hive. We took a frame of swarm cells and switched them into Kisha's hive. Later we checked and they were tending to them. Got to love them nurse bees! Hive #2 was a recent new package. When we opened it up, the hive was doing exactly what we wanted it to do. The girls had used some of the frames that had drawn out comb. The queen had laid eggs, larva was apparent and all was well with this hive! Then we went to hive #3 and what we found was far different from the rest. The queen in this hive was there, meandering about, had not laid a single egg. My thoughts are that she is not a bred queen. The worker bees in this hive had drawn out numerous superceder cells with nothing in them. It was a great day for Kisha because she got a chance to see so many scenarios of hive results! The coming week is filled with rain, so we will re-inspect next week and hope for some real positive results! Happy bees make the beekeeper happy too!
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