Queen Cells

It has been 9 days since we did a split and time to check to see if queen cells are being made.
As you can see, they had one capped cell on this frame and another, off the image, that was in the process of being capped.  We didn't interfere any further with the hive, which has a good number of bees present.  I know some probably migrated back to the original hive but since we put several frames with a lot of brood, the hive has a good population in spite of being situated near the original hive.  I know most experienced beekeepers will tell you you need to move them a couple miles away, but so far I haven't had any problem losing too many bees back to the original hive.  Nice to be lucky about something!
Kathy was noting how many different colors of pollen are coming in right now.  You can see the young lady above loaded down with huge sacks of orange.  There is such variety of plant blooming right now (see the cherry blossoms below)  and the bees have a lot from which to choose.  It would be interesting to see what the honey produced by this variety is like, but at this time of the year, the nectar they harvest gets turned into honey to replenish what they lost over the winter, so by the time we get to filling supers, our honey here comes  more just from sweet clover.  Still, pretty darn tasty!



Comments

  1. Thanks, Gary. I like that there were a number of bees clustering around the queen cells--good sign. Yes, hopefully they'll make it--it was a very hard winter on the bees here in the upper midwest.

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