The State of Bee-ing of the Swarm Hive

The swarm hive has cleaned house and now occupies one half of the box they are in. They had a raunchy collection of frames to work with so today I substituted some drawn comb on deep frames from my absconded Proteus hive from last year. I put those frames in the unoccupied section of the hive. The swarm bees were starting to draw wax and have been quite busy.
Bees with pollen laden legs are landing at the swarm hive every few seconds. Seeing this, I felt optimistic, because although this doesn't necessarily mean there's a laying queen and brood who need pollen, it can mean that. At the very least it means the bees are anticipating young if their queen is still a virgin.
I also moved the swarm bees onto the Country Rubes screened bottom board and they seemed quite pleased. I feel much better about their having a screened bottom board.

On this inspection, I didn't look closely at the bees and didn't look for the queen or eggs - I just wanted to see if the bees needed different frames and to see if they were doing bee work in the hive (building wax, making the place their own, etc.).

I also took another unused deep and set up another swarm lure hive. The new swarm hive took over my old swarm lure set-up, so now I have a new one. I put the solid bottom board and the landing stand from the new swarm hive and set them up as the base of this lure hive.

I also did an inspection on Bermuda and Mellona. Both had eggs, young brood, and lots of bees. Bermuda , the oldest of my hives, is burgeoning with bees. But both hives looked really good. Bermuda has four medium boxes on it and brood in every box. Mellona is building up more slowly, but building up all the same. Mellona has bees and brood in three boxes.

I do what's known as unlimited brood nest because I don't use a queen excluder and let the queen lay wherever she wishes.

On an interesting side note - I did not see one single SHB. When I first opened the hives this spring, I saw lots of them. I don't have any traps in the hives at the moment, but there is not a small hive beetle to be seen. I think this is an argument for a strong hive - great bees in charge, no evident hive beetles until at least later in the season.

So much activity in my bee yard!

Bermuda super being used for brood

Bermuda has a full, capped super that I will take off of the hive on the weekend after Labor Day.

In another super, Bermuda has plenty of honey but is also using this super for brood. In the first picture you can see a few drone cells.

In the last picture, you can see a brood area in the super.

I'll leave this super on the hive just above the second hive box because they obviously are using it for hive development. There's lots of honey in it in the side frames, but I'll probably also leave it. I'll ask all my bee advisors on the Beemasters' Forum and see what they think.