It's been a while...

It's been a month, and things in the apiary are in constant flux.  When August started, I was super concerned about my horizontal hive that had been populated with the small swarm.  It seemed like no matter what I did, it was struggling.  After a couple of weekly zoom meetings with some very experience Hives for Heroes beeks, I took a couple of strong frames of eggs and brood from my traditional hive and moved them over.  That has worked wonders.  The hive is booming and the queen is laying strongly.  I also seem to have the Small Hive Beetle (SHB) problem under control in both hives.  I see a few in the traps, but none on the frames.

The other traditional hive was almost overwhelmed with bees the 2nd week of August and I found a frame with six capped queen cups (yikes).  That's usually a good indicator that the hive is going to swarm.  I moved that frame over to the horizontal hive before it got well to see if that would help.  The next week I found one frame with 10 queen cups and another with two.  I removed all but two of the cups, just in case the hive had swarmed or was about to.  This last Sunday, when I inspected that hive I found absolutely no eggs or brood at all. Scary.  I'm hoping that one of the queen cups I left had a queen emerge and she just hadn't mated yet.  Fortunately I did see drones in my hive so that probably means there are drones from other hives for her to mate with if she's there.  So I'm anxiously awaiting this week's inspection to see if I have a new queen.  I hope so, we're getting in toward the fall nectar flow and with as strong a hive as it is, I could see some fall honey.

I spend a lot of time fretting about my hives swarming, but that's how bees propagate.  The hive gets big and strong and the queen leaves with about half the bees to a new home.  The remaining bees create a new queen from the eggs and larvae left behind.  I've decided that I may make 1-2 more hives while splitting my current hives before they swarm, but after that I'm just going to let the bees do what they do.  As long as they keep making new queens I'll be happy.

I'll try to be more active with this blog, but this month has been busy with my bride having surgery and work being extremely busy, plus our contract ends 30 September with a new prime taking over 1 October so I'm busy with all the transition stuff.