[justgojumpit]

today, upon walking past my hives, i noticed that my weak hive was all of a sudden a whole lot stronger than my strong hive. funny thing, i thought. upon opening the hive for a peek, i noticed that my first brood was emerging, which freed the older workers of hive duties, sending them off to the field to forage. the top-bar hive has started emerging brood too, but my strong langstroth has not. now, i have made a nuc box to raise a queen for my "weak" hive, but i am no longer sure if it is really weak afterall. I think i may end up buying two more deep supers and setting up a double decker hive with my new queen if none of my hives end up being weak after all. What i hadn't realized is that the workers in the "weak" hive could have been older, and therefor dying off, or that the queen is likely unrelated to the original bees anyway, so their performance doesn't reflect the queen's viability anyay. silly me!

justgojumpit

 

[CJ]

Isn't that awesome? Our's emerged a week or so ago and we couldn't believe how busy it suddenly got around there! I just love having the bees up in the yard, it's so exciting to see "our girls" on the clover, and blossoms in the garden!

 

[justgojumpit]

yeah, i can't agree more with you there. i postponed mowing the horse paddocks until after the clover finished blooming I'm also excited about the oportunity to set up a two-queen hive! I simply can't wait. i have the two queen excluders for it already and everything! well, got to go

justgojumpit

 

[kosh]

I think we're all in the same boat. I opened my hive on friday to see if they were ready for the second brood chamber. They had over 7 of the frames drawn out, and I'd say thousands of capped brood that should hatch out shortly. I expect to see a huge population increase this week. I went forward and added the second brood chamber. It's so exciting!