Quick update

The weather is finally good and sunny for a prime nectar flow!  If we get a few more weeks of good weather, we could end up with a fine honey harvest!  The bees have been slow this year as the rainy and cold weather pushed back nectar production, but there's still a good chance of a good harvest if the weather holds.

I brought my friend Chris to the Lair to see the hives there, and we had a lot of fun going through the top two boxes.  I was worried that given their past progress they might be almost done with the 4th box, but actually only one of the hives had even started on the 4th box.  I thought it was interesting that the hive pointed South was about a frame ahead of the other two hives (pointed East).  This is not remotely outside of normal hive variability, but it would be interesting if the South-facing hive did better year after year.

I added a fifth box to all three hives so I won't have to follow them quite so closely in the next couple weeks.

At the Acreage, Meg and Jo are still broodless as of Wednesday when my dad checked.  He has a hard time seeing eggs and didn't check all 70 frames but with any luck the queens are now mated (or getting mated) and getting ready for laying.  If I have a chance tomorrow at our dinner party, I might have another look, but otherwise I'll put it off until next weekend as by then the queens should have emerged (2 weeks) been mated (10 days) and started laying with some time to spare.