Today my dad came up and we checked some more. We found more eggs, larvae and capped brood in the top and middle box. So, not sure which box the queen is in. We didn't see any in the bottom, so we swapped the top and bottom box. Since the queen tends to move up, this will give her space to lay more eggs in the top. We also swapped out a couple frames of funky comb with some empty frames with drawn comb. While the colony was queenless, they spent their time packing more honey and pollen into the cells and building weird comb. This of course didn't leave much empty comb for the queen to lay in. So, today we saw some weird frames with little patches here and there of eggs & brood. Hopefully she'll work her way up to the empty frames and fill in a nice pattern of brood! We should have some new workers hatching real soon too, which will help increase numbers, and provide more bees to build more comb for her to lay in. Here's a video from today:
We are so behind now, when we should have tons of bees, because we had to re-queen the hive. Since they were queenless for so long, their numbers dwindled instead of multiplying. So, it's pretty unlikely that we'll get much honey this year, if any at all. This year will likely just be a "keep the bees alive" season as we work to build the colony back up, and hope to get them through winter for another chance next year.
Unfortunately due to the "catastrophic event" that happened with the guy we pre-ordered a nuc from, we are not going to get any bees into our second hive either. However, I did sign myself up with the MN hobby beekeepers' directory of beekeepers willing to capture a swarm. SO, if some poor soul finds a swarm of bees has landed in their backyard on the west side of the cities, we may just get lucky and have a chance to try capturing some "freebees!!" Now THAT would make for a great vide! Fingers crossed! Till next time, here are a couple shots from my iphone today!
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| taking a drink of sugar syrup! |
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| hangin' at the entrance |
