I did notice more brood cells ripped open with Varroa mites than usual. This is exactly what I got Minnesota Hygenic queens for, although I guess I can't really be certain of the queen genetics now that the queen has been replaced at least once.
Jo, on the other hand, does appear to have a new queen (there are no signs of laying workers) but she's laying mostly drones and I noticed 3 queen cells in the hive. Maybe they're trying to supercede, but the population isn't up to peak nectar gathering any more.
We're going to wait another week or so to decide what to do. Maybe we'll combine Jo with a swarm my dad caught at the acreage, or maybe we'll just take all their honey and restart with a split in the spring.
At the Lair, I had a quick look under the covers, and found that while the two outer hives had just barely started drawing out the 5th box (and were only half done with the 4th), the middle hive had drawn out every square inch of space in all 5 boxes! Since I didn't have any extra supers on hand, I simply moved one from the right hive to the middle hive to even out the space. I'll stop over there tomorrow or the next day to drop off one more super so all 3 hives have extra space. As a related note, frames with wax should not be left outside in a hot car in the sun where the temperature can exceed the melting point of wax.
Here's a picture of the lair after my manipulations. I should really come up with names for these hives, but now that I'm having trouble with Meg and Jo (I'm sure I'm screwing them up now and again) I'm not sure what kind of naming convention I should look for. Maybe just serial numbers?
1. Awesome that you got a pic of the queen!
ReplyDelete2. LOL @ melting wax! Aren't you a scientist? Maybe you should have figured that out beforehand??
3. I thought naming them was my job!
The queens actually look a bit freaky -- like an alien invader!
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I know not to leave frames in hot cars, I'm pretty sure we'd have lost them if I hadn't realized where they were before 10:00 AM.
Finally, sure you can name them, but you'd better come up with a naming convention that is clearly and visually correlated with individual hives. For example, if you want to give them all literary names, I need a spreadsheet with color and maybe a big number on the side so I go back and tell what the heck I meant when I wrote "Balthazar swarmed yesterday."