Blue Heron was due for another teaching inspection today for members of Metro Atlanta Beekeepers' Association and people who took our short course. We had about 8 people at the inspection.
Luckily we had good queen spotters in the group who spotted the queen in my two hives. These hives were all started from nucs this year and not one hive of the three has its original queen. Keith Fielder at our last bee meeting said that the queens in nucs are often poorly mated or old queens that a beekeeper wants to get rid of.
Julia's hive swarmed multiple times and finally have made themselves a good queen. My first hive showed all indication of being queenless from the beginning so we gave them resources and they requeened themselves with a well-functioning queen. The hive that we got to make up for the nuc being queenless had a queen in it but she is no longer there. They have also made a new queen and either ousted the old one or sent out a swarm with her.
Here is the slideshow of our inspection today. As usual, click on the slide to see it full sized and with captions. You can choose how long the picture will be on your screen as well:
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