Here sits the small swarm nuc with a pot of mint on top for beauty and inspiration.
Mint represents hospitality and wisdom.... so maybe this will influence the bees to be happy and welcomed in my little deck beeyard.Two pieces of good news (potentially) anyway:
1. The queen cells were all opened (see second picture). I didn't search for the queen because I wanted to disturb the hive as little as possible. I did not see any new brood or eggs, but if she has returned from her mating flight, she would have just barely started laying.
2. The last picture represented the second piece of good news. I had added a third frame of brood and eggs to the nuc before I left to go out of town on Thursday. Today the frame shows that the capped brood had hatched (you can tell by seeing the empty cells which had caps on them last week) and they did NOT use the eggs to make a queen cell so they must at least feel as if they are queenright for the moment.
I've been quite inspired by your blog. You have a lot of interesting things going on with your hives.
ReplyDeleteI appreciated your video clip showing how to make the hive beetle trap
I'm also impressed with how you keep your hives. It seems you keep them very neat, and I like howyou've arranged them with the plants on your deck, and even placed plants on the hives themselves.
Call me a copy cat, but after seeing what you're doing with your lovely blog, I decided to start my own. It isn't as lovely as yours, but its a start.
I love your blog, Mark - thanks for sharing the address.
ReplyDeleteThis is so exciting! This little nuc is better than a T.V. Soup Opera.
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see your next post about it and the rest of the hives.
And the photos r great!
(I, like Mark, have also been inspired by you and have started a blogg. Ready for my 1st hives next spring.) Keep upthe good work Linda
Warren