This is my 900th Post! Blue Heron Inspections in July and August

I can't believe this is my 900th post. Fitting, since I've been showing so much throughout the other 899 posts about inspecting the beehive, that this post is about two inspections at the Blue Heron. I've been so tied up this summer with moving on July 15 and with teaching at Emory, as I do every summer, that I've gotten behind.

Here, then, is the slideshow from the Blue Heron inspection on July 10. We combined two hives into one - one was the weak nuc we got as a donation and the other was the long-queenless hive that apparently did not accept the donated queen that we got on the same day as the nuc.

First you'll see the inspection of Julia's hive including removing a frame of honey for harvest. Then you'll see the combination of the two weak hives.



We went back to inspect these hives this past weekend on August 14. We've been away from these hives for a little over a month.

Julia wasn't with us and so we didn't get many pictures. I took some of Noah inspecting his and Julia's hive but didn't take any during the inspection of my hive, so you'll just have to read about my part.

The slideshow is below. Noah's hive looked good - with honey, brood, and some small hive beetles but not as many as we have seen before.

My combined hive had no newspaper left between the boxes. The original nuc hive had a black queen from Jennifer Berry's stock. We did not see her but did see an opened queen cell as well as the queen.

This queen was golden and lovely and looked just like the queen I had installed about six weeks ago into the queenless hive half of the combo with the weak nuc. I wonder if she killed off the black queen or if she is a new queen that the bees made. They have had time to make a new queen and for her to be laying since we introduced that donated queen.

We did see lots of eggs and small brood in the combined hive and the hive appeared to be doing well. Cindy wants us to essentially give her back the nuc she gave us in a split from this hive (which she was hoping for in August). However, there's no way this hive is in any kind of shape to split so we'll have to give her back her nuc in the spring.



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