New Bees on the Way: Details

Here's how things broke down when we looked into each of our new hives on 3/27:

The Split: 

The bees were calm. Seven of the eight frames in the bottom box are fully drawn out with the eighth frame being about 1/2 drawn out. The comb is wavy but stays within the confines of the frame. The super is still empty. We found open and capped brood on the seventh frame and the queen and eggs on the eighth frame. The brood pattern seems fairly compact. The queen was heavily attended with workers touching her abdomen; we wondered if she was actually laying.  

The Old Hive: 

The bees were fired up--lots of buzzing and a few bees flew at Tim. We spotted some really patchy brood on the fourth frame. By patchy, I mean that there was a small hand full of capped brood over the whole frame. On the fifth frame, we spotted a fat queen with distinctive dark bands on her abdomen. We saw the same patchy brood pattern on about three frames. We are a little concerned about this queen. We wonder if she is just young and inexperienced or if something is wrong with her. The hive certainly seemed defensive, and the bees sort of just hang around on the flight deck in the morning. We have heard that a queenless hive will have bees milling around without direction. We wonder if the same behavior would indicate a queen in poor health or badly mated. We will keep a close eye on this hive. 

Alan's Nuc:

This is the star colony. We saw the queen and gajillions of eggs on the first frame, which was about 2/3 drawn out. The fourth frame, which Alan lent to us as drawn out comb to lure bees, has been filled with honey and pollen. The fifth frame is about 2/3 drawn out and has a fair bit of pollen stored in it. The rest of the frames are nearly fully drawn out and chock full of eggs, larva and capped brood!

Martin's Nuc:

This is the little hive that could. They have partially drawn out (about 1/3) all of the frames, and the queen is doing her best to fill it all out with eggs. We found the queen on the third frame. She seems to be well mated and in good form. We are going to continue feeding them to stimulate wax production so that they can draw their frames out fully ASAP. Hopefully the bee:larva:egg ratio is balanced well enough to get the next generation of bees to adulthood and foraging. If that all works out, I think we'll have a nice little colony. Sadly, this colony seems to be beleaguered by mites. I saw a worker the other day with about four mites on her, and she was trying to get them off. I actually saw a mite walking across the comb on this inspection. I had really hoped that the long break in the brood cycle would knock the mite population back. 

Alan always says that having more than one hive is helpful in understanding what is going on with your colonies. He is so right; by comparing our four colonies to one another, we can see what it means for a hive to be weak or strong and how colonies behave at different stages of development and growth. May the learning never stop!

Here are the movies of the inspections (click on the link for all of them)......

The Split:




The Old Hive:


Alan's Nuc Box:


Martin's Nuc Box: