No Queen

I checked again yesterday to see if hive #2 had a laying queen yet.  I went through the entire hive, but no eggs or larva.  I ordered a Minnesota Hygenic queen from B & B Honey Farms for both this hive and the nuc I started.  I didn't check to see if they had made a queen cell or not.  I'll check when I get the new queen and remove any cells I might find.

This is an example of the weather we've had the past several days and is forecast to continue until Sunday.  It'll be tricky finding a dry time to try to introduce the new queens, when they arrive near the end of the week. 

 

Suddenly, in the past several days, it's gotten very lush, green out there.  The white clover is just starting to show, but as wet as it is I don't know how much the bees will be able to get out and harvest much nectar.

This is a foggy, damp view out back of our house.  The hives are at the far end of the field, beyond the garden and vineyard.  After rain all morning yesterday, there was a brief interlude when I could go out and check the hive.  The bees in hive #2 were all over the place, and I briefly thought perhaps it was pre-swarm activity, there were so many in the air around the hive.  They settled down after awhile.  I think it was just some pent-up energy from having to be inside much more than they'd like.

I also ordered a new hive set from Mann Lake to move the nuc into.  I'm trying an 8 frame hive.  The 10 framers get heavier each year, and from what I've read the 8 frames can do just fine.  I'm not really sure I want to move up to 3 hives, but I'll try it for awhile and see how it goes.  We certainly, for ourselves anyway, don't need more honey than we harvested last year.  We're still giving it away regularly.  Kathy has sold enough to her exercise "buddies" to cover the cost of the containers, but we have no plans to do any serious selling of honey.