Queenright!

I got in the hives this morning despite the heat and humidity.  The horizontal hive is growing gangbusters, I had to add two more frames.  If it keeps going at this pace I may get some fall honey! 🤞🏼

I told you in last week’s post that my traditional hive had lots of bees, but no eggs or brood.  I was mildly concerned, thinking the queen had swarmed or died.  When I looked at the frames in the middle of the hive I saw this!

That big bee on the upper right side of the first picture is possibly a queen, but more importantly, those little white spots that look like tiny grains of rice in the second picture are eggs, and in a few cells of the third picture, you can see what looks like little curled worms.  Those are larvae.  So happily, both my hives are what is called “queenright”.  It’s a good day.  That hive did have a second brood box on it, but no brood in it, only honey and pollen.  So I forced all the bees in it to the bottom box and removed it.  That will make them work those frames.  There’s plenty of resources still there, plus lots of space for more brood.  If they get those drawn out and the queen continues laying, I’ll put a queen excluder and a honey super (just another box but not as deep) and see if I can get some fall honey there, but I’m not counting on that.