Friday, June 18, 2010

hive update 6/18....


well, i got into the hives tonight to see if any of my predictions were true.

1. the garbage can hive, which i thought i had injured the queen has started to re queen itself. the injured queen was no where to be found and there are 2 queen cells. so it looks like that hive is in the reforming stage, but they have brood and i'm thinking it'll be alright.

2. the new queen hive. 2 queen cells still, good worker numbers and brood, so this looks ok.

3. the original bill bird hive (originally the first construction hive). :( this one is just not going to make it. even with brood, the hive isnt replacing its queen. and honestly, i dont know if this hive ever had a laying queen, there were eggs, but i am betting it was laying workers. if you recall, this is the hive i found a queen under the bottom board and when i placed her in the hive, she was balled up by the worker bees and dead by the end of the day. in fact, tonight i will shake out the bees and use this box for my hive pickup tomorrow.

4. looked into the third construction hive (refer to picture on previous post) and i saw newly laid eggs and saw a nice fat italian queen. so this one is the new bill bird hive (renamed in adjoining picture). so bill, we are still in the game, this one is looking good. we need to plan on day and time to make the drop off.

tomorrow 6/19 - keith and i will be up early to wrangle 3 more hives from the construction site.

1 comment:

  1. Okay -- did I tell you I'm really bad with numbers? Us non-engineers are like that Garry. I'll just trust your reports that the Bill Bird hive is somewhere around in that mix. My offer of help remains. You should have my number. If not -- I'll send it to your FB account.

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