More bottom box!

Bottom box finds and lack of findings

When I went into the bottom box I expected to find some sign of the queen laying, but all I found was empty brood cells, a couple of queen cells and some stores of honey.

At least two of the queen cells produced queens. Not sure if that is where my queen came from and if she was a virgin queen so that is why I'm not seeing any signs of laying?

I have a call into the supplier to see what his advise is.

The hive seemed calm so I'm just not sure. If they were really hot I would KNOW that the queen didn't make it.

Bearding

When I went to check on the bees I found a nice sized clump of bees hanging out on the front porch. They must have been hot so I removed the makeshift reducer I had in. After the inspection and removal of the reducer they moved back into the hive.

When checking on the new medium box I had added last week when the weather broke I was pleased to see that they are drawing out comb.

Reversing brood boxes and adding room to the nuc

I reversed the brood boxes in Demeter so the queen, hopefully in theory, will move up into the empty box and start laying brood in the drawn out empty frames.

I also added a box with half strips of foundation on the top of Luna to give her some room to kick it in for spring.

Story to follow....

This tree is on my in laws property an hour south of me in Griffin. My father in law call and said that he had found a tree with bees living in it while mowing.

I'm not sure how long the hive has been in the tree or how big the cavity is. It was chilly on Friday when I went to assess the situation. There was some bring in of pollen even with the chilly weather.

I set up a medium hive body with some starter strips and smeared the hive body with the lemon and olive oil mixture I had made last year. A second medium went on top so I could put in a feeder w/ syrup and honey b healthy. I didn't have
spare top cover so I used a piece of plywood w/ some rocks. It has rained since I put out the hive on Friday and it is supposed to clear out tonight and be really nice over the next couple of days so I hope they will take interest and decide to upgrade to my hive or run out of room and swarm into it.

If you click on the pictures you can see up close how many bees are in that tree.

Todays findings

I forgot to check the sticky board for a couple 3 days and it had really good numbers on the mites! After 3 days I had probably 25-30 mites.

Luna is finishing off a pint on it second day and Demeter is still just kinda taking the syrup.

This hive will be named Luna

It was a full moon last night so we are going to call this hive Luna.

My friend Britt painted a box for me.

New nuc

Yesterday when I was called to pick up my nuc I was a little surprised that it was already time. Last year I didn't get to get my package till mid April.

The Nuc was 'boiling over' with bees, three frames of worker brood and some pollen and a small amount of honey.

I put a entrance feeder on and they have already taken about 2" worth of syrup with honey b healthy in it.

I did make a beginners mistake on not letting them settle after I got home before removing the screened entrance blocker. Only got it once on the arm.

Milk paint is my paint of choice. It has such nice colors to it and no fumes at all.

March inspection cont...

The bottom box was empty except two frames of worker brood and quite a bit of pollen. Had the bottom box been completely empty I would have reversed the boxes to give the queen room to move up and lay. One small hive beetle was all that was seen. No queen cells. Started a 24 hour mite count that I will check in a couple of hours and put in a quart of sugar syrup with honey b healthy in it.

March hive inspection

The weather is in the 70's this week after last weeks snow fall. In the top box they still have some capped honey. Some pollen and quite a bit of drone brood and a small amount of worker brood.

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Below is a empty emergency cell that they started and didn't use. All the different colors in the surrounding cells is stored pollen.

The bullet shaped cells are the drone cells. Above them the flat capped cells are worker cells and if you look closely you can see uncapped larvae mixed in w/ the capped worker brood. Eggs were not spotted during the whole inspection.