Due to the weather report for Saturday (heavy rain), we decided to investigate some hives on Thursday, June 19th. Patsy, Chris, Brad Jacob and Karen Jones dove into 9 hives plus some NUC's. Saturday June 21st we will doing some maintenance work but will not get into any hives.
The four mating NUC's have been in place since June 7th and are labeled M! through M4. M1 and M2 are low on bees while M3 and M4 are quite strong. No sign of eggs or brood at this point.
Hive #2 has three deeps and 2 Supers, it is very strong. Too alleviate pressure and avoid swarming we made a split with one of the three deep boxes. We will see if we raise a new queen.
Hive #4 is very strong with lots of brood and may be a candidate for another split. Equipment for splits is a priority at this point.
Hive #5 has been queenless for a while and we had a new swarm move into the swarm trap in the alder tree at the southeast corner of the apiary. This created an opportunity to combine this swarm with #5 using the newspaper method. We did not find the queen, but hopefully this will solve the queen problem.
Hive #7 is very strong and may also be a candidate for a split.
Hive #8 is queenless and may be a location for split in the future.
Hives 3, 3A, 6 and 9 were all in good shape.
Our apiary and garden learning center is progressing nicely and many flowers are blooming, we have benches and picnic tables in place. If you haven't visited it lately you need to see what has been done.
