June 15: Bee Inspection -- Good News/Bad News

Well, the bad news first. The swarm hive left. Hardly any bees -- probably all robbers. Still a little capped brood in a few frames but we expect that will result in nothing since there won't be any nurse bees to take care of it. Anya, the next hive, has a queen cell, probably from the frame of eggs and brood we put in last time, but the hive may already have had a queen since there was a little brood in another frame. So that hive is hopeful

Bianca (the nuc hive we bought this year) has an incredible number of bees which is strange because there still is no sign of a laying queen. So we took a frame of young larvae and eggs from Charlie and added it in the middle of the bottom box. Charlie, our original hive coming out of the winter, has loads of bees and lots of brood.

We are a little frustrated since we spent $170 on the nuc hive which apparently swarmed which is why we don't have a queen there, and we spent $100 to a beekeeper who helped retrieve the swarm hive from the garage. We won't buy a nuc again, just depend on our own hives and if they go bust we'll retire. 

The good news is that honey production is booming. Last inspection we took out one frame of honey. This time we took six and could have taken a few more that were fully capped, but decided it was better not to have too many undrawn frames in the box. 

seven frames of honey in the fridge waiting to be harvested

The bees in the three active hives have enough work to do with the empty frames already in there. But we will likely get more honey and expect a good productive season. Seven frames is about 21 pounds of honey. We still have some honey from last year but always look forward to see what the current honey season provides. Every year it's different. Can't wait to taste this years Camp Kreitzer Gold.