Still waiting to hear from Snyder’s on when they will have a June queen ready for me to replace my original queen. In the mean time, the Tardis hive seems to be progressing well. The bottom brood box has five frames of mostly (20-50%) larvae and capped brood. There is a lot more drone brood than I would like to see, but the bees know what they want.
The top brood box is being built out with four of the frames of foundation either fully or mostly built out comb. Four of the frames are still untouched, but the hive is still new and it takes time to build up the worker population.
Caught the queen in the bottom brood box with my spiffy one handed queen catcher and marking plunger. Added a white mark and let her back into the hive. The bees were not too happy with her when I released her into the hive. I hope they don’t reject her.
I didn’t inspect the “Bees Rules” hive this time. Catching and marking my first queen was enough excitement for one day.