Hoping for Good Results

After the hives were re-queened Thursday, I had some out of town things to take care of until Sunday. I needed to pick up some things around the bee yard that I left lying around. If the new queens are accepted I may have to change names for the hives. I have been toying with herb names for a while. I am big fan of herbs and I grow them all the time.My new NUC sitting on top of the TBH is a split from “Old Faithfull”, my original hive. I’m not sure if it has a queen, but it has a frame to make one and plenty of resources. I also did something in the NUC and all the hives that I think I'm pretty smart for having had thought of it. I put them all to work drawing out 4 total bars from the TBH hive. The bees for it are due to arrive early May. The drawn out frames would be a great head start for the package. So the NUC is composed of one frame of eggs (only one I found in “Old Faithful “) to make a queen if there is no queen, and medium frame of honey, a frame of pollen and honey, one new never used plastic frame, and one Bar from the TBH. From the outside the NUC looks promising.

In my other 3 hives I placed the new queen cage face down over the top of frames containing capped brood. How did I manage to make the cage fit?? Simple, I took one or two frames from the supper above and replaced them with bars from the TBH. They have no bottom bar so the cage doesn’t get in the way, and the bees should begin to draw them out. As soon as I have time and the weather cooperates, I will open the hives to inspect for newly laid eggs from my new queens and at the same time retrieve the TBH bars to replace them with regular frames.

Here is “Old Faithfull”. I removed two deep frames and one medium frame to create the NUC above. The bees should be working on one TBH bar and

my eager NUC and new queen are working on two TBH bars. The colony also moved the brood frames completely up to the supper.

My Angry hive has a new queen and are working on two TBH bars. The colony has a great laying pattern but is also laying a lot of drones. They are useless resource sucking male bees.

I’m torn between inspecting to look at the new queens or letting them be until the weekend. I think I’ll let the weather decide. We are supposed to get more rain in the next few days.