Note: It is a lot more work to inspect two hives than one little hive.
In the Tardis
Earlier in the week (June 3rd) I got into the Tardis hive to see if the new queen had been released. She was still in the queen cage, but the bees seemed to have accepted her. Not knowing that there is a cork in both sides of the queen cage I popped the staple that was holding the screen and released her into the hive. She is a lot darker than my other queen. I sure hope I can find her later to mark her.
The guy at Krantz told me that her line is extremely hygienic and that if I marked her the bees would clean the paint off. We’ll see. I’m thinking that he just doesn’t want to deal with the risk of the additional handling and having the mating hive accept her with the paint on.
While the queen was in the cage the rest of the hive was pretty busy building wax and collecting nectar and pollen. I added the second brood chamber.
Two of the frames in the bottom box have had the wax built too wide to properly squeeze the frames back together. I’ll have to figure out how to trim these back down to keep the bee space under control with these.
Bees Rules Hive
I’ve decided that I really suck at finding bee eggs. There is lots of capped brood in areas that I thought were nectar storage. There are a few frames of foundation in this hive though that the bees don’t seem to want to have anything to do with. Most notable are the all plastic frames and the ‘plastic green drone’ frame. I pulled these frames that the bees don’t seem to loke and painted them with melted bees wax. It will be interesting to see it that makes the difference.