New Hive

I moved the bees from hive #3 into their new home this afternoon.  For now, I put them into two medium supers of the 8 frame hive.  It will be interesting to see how this does throughout the year, the winter in particular.  From what I've read, they should do no worse than my 10 frame hives.  Time will tell.

 

 

Our spiffy new 8 frame hive.

 

As I moved frames over, I noted quite a number of eggs.  Surprisingly, I saw no young larva.  The lighting was not the best, however, and many of the frames have newer, white wax so seeing small 1 or 2 day old larva would have been difficult.  I'll look again in several days when there should be some larger larva.  I again did not locate the queen. 
I then moved the frames from the nuc into one of the boxes I had just taken the frames out of to put in the 8 frame hive.  The queen had emerged, but I did not see her.  She should have emerged last Sunday, so I'll give them another week or so to see if there is a laying queen.  If not, I'll combine these bees with #3 and that will make it a much stronger hive.

The nuc moved into a single medium with the 8 frame beyond.

 

 

 

I thought about moving hive #3 over by the pine trees with the other hives for protection, but decided they are fine in this location and I'll move them in the fall.
Bees were flowing in and out of hive #2.  I put another super on it yesterday, though the first had not been even 80% drawn out.  There is a good flow going on right now, though, and with the wet weather I decided it was best to go ahead and throw that super on. 

A very strong #2 hive

Hive #1 was also full of bees and I quickly found eggs and young larva, so that proves a successful new queen introduction.  Overall, we're pretty happy with things though I still would like to see some better success with starting my own queens.  I'm sure I'll get plenty more opportunities.