Learning Beekeeping

Visited the out yard – it finally has some flow. But small. Indian Blanket finally showed up in the field. Late, and little, but some. Also saw the beginning of horsemint. The hives were so hungry earlier this month they are slow to recover likely from cannibalizing eggs. Some only grew 1 frame of brood.
One hive had still not taken their syrup. Strange. I”m not wondering if the holes were more plugged up than usual. But my main theory is the bees failed to find it, because the super above the nest was empty.

Of the two hives I dropped a Corey Stevens queen cell in, only 1 took. The other was queenless. I gave them a frame of mixed brood and honey. All hives got feed but the one strong hive with stores.

I’m thinking there may be a pollen shortage that retards brood up.

Out for a walk and noticed the Chinese Privet was just blooming down by the local creek. Bees were working it hard. Good to see some nectar flowing. Mostly this spring has been a bust for beekeeping.
I haven’t checked any of my hives as I have to wait for the queens to mate. Maybe this week I’ll check some of the established hives.

Quick trip to the outyard to check. I left 2 galleons of feed on all the hives 2.5 weeks ago. Three of the 4 are really in rough shape. I didn’t see much bee bread or stores of honey/sugar.

One hive still had 1.5 g of feed on it, but didn’t take it for some reason

The best hive was at 10 frames and doing well. I found the queen and put her in a 3 frame split to the side. Then split the remaining hive in two, let them go queen-less for an hour and then gave them each a Corey Stevens queen. It will take a few days for the bees to chew thru the queen candy.
Each new split was given 2 gal of feed, save the original queen, who only got a quart jar as that was the only feeder I had left.

Yesterday, at the home yard, I split the queen-less hive in two and gave one a Corey queen and let the other keep the queen cells. It should take 2 weeks to hatch and a week or two to lay, but I get a free queen out of it.

The big hive that was beginning to make honey, I used all the 2nd level deep brood frames to make 2 new nucs. Using the last 2 Corey queens

All nucs now have laying queens, some have milkbrood. So I wasn’t able to see eggs. I need to get a flashlight or readers going forward.

The one nuc I thought I had my queen in originally, showed up with a marked queen. I realized the emergency egg frame I gave them 29APR, may have had the queen with it. So the donor hive is now queenless, crap. Well, maybe for the best, that nuc may not have had a queen at all.