Tug of War

Today, I checked Martin's nuc, the old hive and the TBH.

I noticed some resistance when I pulled the top bars apart. I thought maybe the bees had bridged two combs together, but then I noticed them festooning across multiple frames of comb. I was playing tug of was with bees. It amazed me how strong they were!

The TBH has released their queen! I didn't actually see her, but the queen cage was empty. Hopefully, we'll see some eggs or the queen next week.

Martin's nuc is turning out to be a really strong little hive. I need to get it into a regular Langstroth ASAP. All of the frames are at least 1/2 drawn out, and there are ALOT of bees on the frames. I saw the queen. She has a nice long body, but she's not terribly fat. Nonetheless, she's doing a bang up job of filling the frames out with brood. They were packed. They seemed to have a good amount of nectar and pollen in storage too. Also, when I walked out into the yard this afternoon around 4:00, it looked like this hive might be preparing to swarm. It kind of freaked me out at first, but then I remembered that they don't have a spare queen. They did eventually settle down. Maybe late afternoon orientation flights?

The old hive is still a source of concern for me. There are LOADS of bees. I have to get a second deep on them this week. But the brood pattern is irregular, and I saw one of the bees with diarrhea in the hive. Not good. I'm hoping that will clear up with the better weather. There was also a supercedure queen cup on the third frame, and I have to confess that I removed it. There was nothing in it, and in a moment of panic thinking that the hive might swarm, I cut it out. In hind sight, I realize that it wasn't a swarm cell, it was a supercedure cell, and that the queen might be having problems and need to be replaced. Hopefully they will build another one if they really need it.

All of the hives have pretty decent stores.