Queen Right! and other things

Whew.  Our near catastrophy at doing a direct release of the queen into the new hive seems to have been averted.  We introduced her last Thursday, 4 days ago, and weren't sure whether or not she made it into the hive.  We filled the rest of the medium super with frames and closed it up, hoping for the best.  Today, I opened the hive and noticed all the bees were clustered on one half of the hive.  I guessed, correctly, that if there was a queen and eggs or very young larva, that's where the bees would be concentrated.  I did not find the queen, but did find a good number of eggs, some sticking straight up, which would indicate one day old eggs and a number of 2 to 3 day old eggs laying on their side.  I looked carefully, since I couldn't locate the queen, to make sure they were centered in the cells and there were not multiple eggs in the cells.  It looks good, and I will look to see if they develop properly into worker cells in about a week.  Bees looked happy and busy and I saw some with pollen, which is another good sign.

The new hive is shown here.  The little nuc contains five frames.  One of the frames had several queen cells and they should have emerged one or two days ago.  I'll give that another week before I go peeking around in there.  The queen right hive will be moved into a new 8 frame hive, as soon as the new ones arrive from Mann Lake and I get them assembled and painted.  If a queen develops in the nuc, I will likely give this one to a friend who lost most of his bees this winter.  In a couple of days I will check hive #1 to see if that queen is laying as well.  I've been busy cleaning up old frames and have used up my supply of foundation, so I'll need to order some or take a day trip down to Dadant and pick some up.

White clover is beginning to go strong, but I saw few honey bees on it.  Last year, which was a dry summer, the bees were all over the clover.  I think this spring, being late and quite wet, has provided a variety of blooming plants and the bees can have their pick at this time.  As summer progresses and choices narrow, I'm sure they'll go strongly to the clover. 

Aside from all the rain, which has created some minor flooding in the area, it has been a nice spring.  We have been able to get all of our gardening jobs done.  Here are Kathy's tomato plants, which are looking very good.  At the far end of the garden is a row of black raspberries, and the bees were definitely on their blooms.

The vineyard is looking good.  This is my favorite time with the grapes, when they are just setting on and I don't see any signs of disease yet, no Japanese beetles yet, and the vines looks clean and fresh.  The winter was very hard on my vines.  I lost two completely, Cayuga whites, and had dead shoots on a number of vines.  Harvest will be much below average this year.

The late, cool spring has brought a bumper crop of fruit in our area.  Our blueberries look fantastic so far, and we look to have a great harvest of not only blueberries but apples, cherries (sweet and sour)  raspberries, and peaches.  The rhubarb has been wonderful as has the asparagus this year.

Unfortunately, with all the spring chores of bee care, gardening, home maintenance, etc., I haven't even uncovered the sailboat or our power boat for some water fun.  It'll happen--summer isn't even officially here yet!