Bee Yard Visit on June 7

We still have a lot of flowers blooming in our part of Texas, but we are nearing the end of the spring nectar flow.  On June 7, I made the drive to Navasota to pick up our BeeWeaver Italian queen that we had on order, and then I drove on to Caldwell to install her in our hive 02, where we thought we were without a queen.   (Click on photos to enlarge).

Some Texas wildflowers near our hives.

I needed to inspect each of the eight hives to make certain they were in good shape, so I checked hive 01 first.  Hive 01 had about three fames of bees, as well as new eggs.  The hive was doing very well. 

I opened hive 02 to double checked and be certain there was no queen before I installed the new queen, but low-and-behold she was there and she was laying eggs.  Whoops!  She was very large – how did we miss her during our last visit?  The hive had capped brood, uncapped larvae, small larvae and new eggs.  There were about four frames of bees and the hive seemed very healthy.  I watched while several nurse bees followed the queen around.  I had a decision to make; disturb this healthy colony by adding our new queen and removing the old queen, or leave this hive as is and find another home for our new queen.  Before making the decision, I inspected the remaining hives to make sure they were each healthy and had laying queens, in case we could use her elsewhere.

Hive 02, click on photo and look closely to see new eggs.

Hive 03 had one super and the bees were doing a great job repairing its old, beat-up comb.  While there was no honey in this super (and it is getting late in the season for the bees to make much more honey), I decided to keep it on the hive, so they could continue to work and finish repairing the comb for next season. The hive has a ton of bees and there was a loud buzzing coming from the deep hive boxes.

Hive 04 had two deep hive boxes and there was capped brood in top deep hive box. There was some extra bee space in the top deep hive and the bees had built-out some crazy comb and put a good deal of honey into one frame, which stuck way out from the frame.  It was funny to see how much honey was in this one frame!

Hive 04 with a frame with a lot of comb and honey.

Hive 05 is in very similar shape as hive 03.  It has one super and the bees were doing a great job repairing the old comb.  I left this super on the hive, so the bees could keep up their good work with the repairs.

Hive 06 has two deep hive boxes. The top box had several frames that had yet to be built out with comb, but there are tons of bees and they are working feverishly to get the job done. This appeared to be their main activity today.

Hive 07 has one deep hive box. This hive has a new queen that was put in just a few weeks ago.  There are three frames of bees, capped brood and lots of young larvae.  The colony looks great.

Hive 08 has only one deep hive and the colony is doing great.  There are about six frames of bees, uncapped larvae, new eggs and some honey.  The bees are working hard to finish building out the remaining four frames with comb.

So, needless to say, Mark and I are very proud of all of our hives.  But, we had this extra queen and needed to find a home for her, now that we no longer needed her.  This was  easy, as we belong to the Houston Beekeepers Association and it seems that beekeepers always need a queen.  We were able to help out a fellow beekeeper in our group who wanted to re-queen his "hot hive". 

All eight hives at the end of the visit.  I've added a jar of sugar water
to the top of each hive to give the bees a little "treat".