These are our hives after working with the bees today. All 3 hives are strong colonies, and now all 3 are queenright. Hive #3, the one on the right, was seemingly without a queen on St. Patrick's Day. No queen to be found, no brood, no pollen being brought in, unlike the other hives. I put a couple frames with a mix of capped and uncapped brood hoping for an early queen but uncertain if it would work with typically few available drones at the time the queen would emerge. Apparently, though, we were successful in getting a queen or else she was there all along, just taking her time getting started on the season. Who knows?
At any rate, things are looking good. We added a box of undrawn frames to hive #2 and planned to do that to hive #1 as well, but I'll do that next week. We ran a bit short of frames today, since we had to remove about half a dozen due to a greenish mold that was on the frames. These were all older frames and it's good to recycle some frames each season anyway. We'll also do a split next week and start nuc or two.
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This was one of theframes we removed, showing a bluish-green mold on top of the frame.
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If anyone is familiar with this type of mold, I'd like to hear about it. The mold appeared on top of the frames in the lower boxes, and also in many of the cells of the frame as well. This winter and spring we put winter patties from Mann Lake in the hive, sugar water and sugar patties we made. In the fall we treated with MAQS.
This week I also hung a swarm trap on a dead pine tree near the hives, about 6 feet off the ground. I put several frames in the trap as well as a cotton ball with drops of lemongrass oil on it. If we're lucky...
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Our first swarm trap. Hope to catch one!
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