Sorry I am a bit behind with the updates. This post is from April 15, 2024
The past two weeks have been warmer which has helped our bees forage for resources and for three of our hives to produce new mated and laying queens. Our inspection this week found Hive 7’s new queen is now laying and producing a good brood pattern. Similarly, our new queen in Hive 1, which we split 4 weeks ago, is now laying and producing a nice brood pattern too. Hive 9 which we created from Hive 2 two weeks ago has grown enough that we have added a second deep box.
Since we split it from Hive 1, the queen in Hive 8 has been slow to resume laying and has produced a poor brood pattern. In response, Hive 8 decided it was time for new management by producing a supersedure cell two weeks ago. Since we needed a new queen in Hive 7 and we wanted to give the queen in hive 8 more chance to acclimate to the change, we took hive 8’s supersedure cell, and put into Hive 7. On inspection this week, we saw that hive 8’s workers have again created a supersedure cell, confirming their desire for new management. This week, we obliged them by removing their queen and are allowing them to create a new one.
Hives 5, 6, and 3 are queen-right and strong. We added honey supers to all three.
This coming week is expected to continue to be warm and we are expecting the bees to continue to do well.