I just purchased two Queens this week from Starr. Had previously purchased from him, texted him and asked if he had any available, and if I could pick up at the end of the week. He can be a bit tough to get a hold of at times.
So how are your hives doing? What do you see?
Finally once the sun started shining my hives are picking up quite nicely. I have seven now. Five were nucs that are now in double deeps. Plenty of brood, eggs, larva, nectar and pollen. I moved a couple of the frames from the bottom box up, picking frames that were side by side and keeping them together. I then pushed the remaining frames together and put empty frames in their place.
The one serious observation I had was related to undrawn comb. If the foundation was a sheet of beeswax they worked it just fine. If it was plastic foundation without any additional wax they wanted nothing to do with it. So I took those out and will "do the right thing", i.e. wax them and put them back in. I left space in the top box to make it easy to do.
The one and only unwaxed plastic foundation they had just started to work they were doing "wonky" creations on it. The kind that makes it look like uneven strips of mountain ranges. We can't allow that. So that one came out. The wax will get shaved down and the rest of the frame evenly waxed.
I got a new colony this week as a result of an artificial swarm in a friend's hive. She had three of the most gorgeous queen cells I have ever seen. So we took the queen and about five frames of brood in various stages and made a nuc which she gave to me. So the colony thinks it swarmed and we had a win-win situation.
I requeened my colony that had serious chalkbrood with a caucasian queen I got from Old Sol. $75 plus $39 in shipping. They said I was lucky. They were sold out for a month out but someone canceled.
Lots of us bought queens from Starr Farms in Eugene. I learned this week that he is no longer selling queens and maybe is out of business. The reason has something to do with back issues.
Lastly, I got everything I need to make oxalic acid towels. I watched the Randy Oliver youtube on that and am going to try it. A lot of folks in the club already have. According to Randy you should only do it once and leave them on for about seven weeks.
Okay, I forgot to tell you one thing. I was with Rick Stelzig going through some hives that he did a walk-away split on. We saw something I had never seen before. A group of about ten bees were killing what I assume was a virgin queen. They were jumping on her and pulling her from all directions. One dragged her to the edge of the comb to drop her off. I saved her but probably not for long. I've never seen that before.
Wishing you enjoyable times. Do share your stories....