Liquid Gold

In anticipation of an upcoming West Coast business trip I did an inspection today. I was interested in checking the conditions of the "June" hive. This is by far my weakest hive and I was pleasantly surprised with what I found! They've started to draw out a lot more comb and there is plenty of capped brood, eggs & larvae. They have a small amount of pollen, nectar and capped honey in the brood box as well. I did find a couple of supercedure cells and I intend to let nature take its course and replace the reigning queen. The colony can still destroy the queen cells and abandon their attempts to replace the queen. I guess we'll wait to see what happens.

Since I was all suited up and in the bee yard, I decided to take a quick peek at the three newest colonies that I recently acquired from BeeYond Wonderful Apiaries. All three brood boxes are 100% full of capped brood, nectar & honey. I'm very satisfied with the transaction I made with Mike Sorensen and can't believe the amount of bees in each colony. WOW! Perhaps one day my "June" colony will look like these! They're currently working to fill the honey supers that will be used for Winter stores. Colony One has filled their super so I added another deep brood box last week. I'm amazed at how fast they're drawing out & filling the comb in the new brood box. The picture above is a frame from Colony One's honey super. How beautiful is that? Colonies Two & Three have their honey supers filled to about 20% capacity, so they have a ways to go yet. It has been raining in the area off/on over the past few days. I'm hoping the rain will bring some relief and help with the Fall honey flow. I would love to have some excess honey this year.