We had a stellar visit to the bee yard last night! Paula's partner Andrea joined us for her first ever visit to The Flight of The Turquoise Bee Apiary in four years. I think she brought some really good karma along because every single hive has made progress.
We didn't even look inside Patrick's Pollinator, we know those girls are doing well. We did add a second brood box onto the hive. Once the brood nest is 80% full it is important to give the Queen more room to lay by adding another box. The second box is full of frames that are combed out, packed with pollen and just a tiny bit of honey. That should draw the Queen and the bees up to the new box and hopefully in about 10 days we will find new capped brood up there.
Katraina's Drone Den is making progress and we found her marked Queen easily. I would still like to see more effort in this hive but I was darn happy to see more brood.
Colleen's Royal Ruckus is doing well, nice brood, not a tun but a nice patter and a good start.
Now for the really good news! The Turquoise Bee has a frame or two of really nice looking brood. A really good sign that the Queen we put in there two plus weeks ago is health and laying. We didn't see an abundance of drone brood which means more than likely we have tempered the laying workers and turned the hive around. I am guessing that the huge cells we saw last week that really looked like queen cups to me were in fact just really big drone brood. To that point, all those cells were hatched out without any torn ends, another sign that it was drone. I also saw some really huge drones. So I am feeling might good about that hive.
In my moment of panic about that hive I snatched a surreal opportunity to get a late season package and we put those girls in last night. Her name is in the works and we will unveil that hopefully next week.
So, I am flying high so to speak!
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