Update

It's 66 F right now.

I'm sitting in the backyard in a sunny spot right among our three hives. The old hive is humming along with foragers coming and going, bringing in pollen--basically business as usual. The only oddity is that we are still hearing at least two queens tooting and quacking away. We might be in for another swarm!

The new hive seems to be struggling a bit. They are kicking out dead drones by the tens, no one is foraging and we've only seen a small hand full of bees coming and going. After giving them a few days to get their act together, we decided that it was time to give them some food today (1:1 sugar:water). I suspect that they ended up with a good chunk of the drone brood from the complete hive when we split it and that the majority of the worker bees that came along and stayed were nurse bees. The drones are dying off because of the mites, which we are not yet sure we want to treat. We think the bees may be exhibiting hygenic behavior by ridding the hive of the drones, and we'd like to give them a chance to turn the situation around before medicating. We've also heard that a break in brood cycle caused by splitting the hives can get the mites under control as well. The nurse bees should be turning foragers any time now, so they should start bringing in some food. This hive is still tooting and quacking as well!

The top bar is just plain fascinating. We put windows on the hive so that we can look in on the bees from time to time. We couldn't resist a look today. They were clumped up around the entrance holes in the top for most of the morning. Now they are starting to leave the hive and orient. Entering through wine-cork-sized holes in the side of the hive rather than a nice long slot with a ramp presents a steep learning curve, but they are figuring it out. We also laid under the hive and looked up through the screened bottom. We saw two dead queens! I sure hope a third queen was hiding somewhere in the masses of the swarm.

We've actually found four dead queens now. There are the two I just mentioned as well as two that we found on the flight deck of the old hive. The first one I found had a torn wing, which Alan suggested might have resulted from the fight that cost her her life. The others have seemed completely intact. Tell tale signs of fighting are missing antenae and torn wings.