April 27, 2023
Mostly sunny day, lower 70s, moderate to high wind. G hive seems to have much more activity, C and S hives also have a lot of foraging bees. Goal is a quick inspection of G hive, feeding of C hive and quick look at S hive. One side of the Apimaye top feeder on G hive was empty but they did not really touch the other side. Noticed some spots in the feeder like mold but the color looks more like crystals that are not easily scraped off. Not sure what that’s all about. Emptied the old water they did not drink and left it empty. Filled the feeder on the side they drank. G hive still has not built a lot of comb. The frame taken from C hive did not look much different from last week except for a capped queen cell. Since I could not find the queen and the colony seems to be better but still struggling, I left the queen cell in place. We will see what happens. I do feel better about the hive’s survival. Closed the entrance on the side of the hive with less activity. Considering placing the divider in the hive to shrink the space from 7 frames to three. C hive has finally started building comb in the honey super, but it is very slow going. They were much calmer than last week when I stole a brood frame. I filled the internal feeder and let them get back to their bee business. S hive is the most robust. Five frames of bees in the top medium honey super (see Pics page).They are busy filling the super with comb and honey. Hopefully soon I can add another.

April 19, 2023
Moved one frame of mostly capped brood from C hive into G hive because they are not building comb very quickly and the population does not look strong at all. C hive was not happy about the move and got very aggressive very quickly.

April 16, 2023
Added 1:1 syrup in all three hives. Recently caught hive, G hive for Garage hive, does not have a lot of bees in it, maybe two frames, but they are active and drinking the syrup up. I opened the bottom entrances completely on both sides yesterday because they were bearding on the outside (see Pics page). Most went back inside. Don’t see as much activity outside C hive, so I thought perhaps it swarmed and that was the one I caught in the garage. Does not appear to be the case. C hive has as many bees as before; although, I did not get below the medium brood box but looked from the honey super. C hive is not building much comb in the honey super, but they did drink a lot of syrup. S hive is booming. Four frames of drawn comb in the honey super and stored honey production has started. I gave them all the syrup I had left which filled the two frame medium internal feeder about halfway. Thinking I pull that feeder next week as the flow is really kicking in.

April 12, 2023
Very strange thing happened today. After researching and placing three different swarm traps around the property, a swarm moved into the Apimaye 7 frame hive box I bought and stored in the garage for when I caught a swarm. Boy, that saves a lot of work LOL. I waited until nightfall, closed up all the entrances, and moved them to the back of the property under a Mesquite tree away from the other two hives. I opened two entrances but limit them to only worker bees for now. Next morning, I added 1:1 syrup. You can see a brief video on the Video page. You can see a pic of the hive placement on the Pics page.

I also added internal medium syrup feeders to both C and S hives in the honey supers and added 1:1 syrup.

April 11, 2023
Sunny day, mid 70s, with very light winds. Life has gotten in the way, and it has been too long since I have inspected the hives. S hive has about 3 to 4 drawn frames in the honey super above the queen excluder. No honey stored. C hive has almost no activity in the honey super above the queen excluder. Not much honey in either hive, but did see quite a bit of bread. Contemplating some spring 1:1 sugar syrup for both. Saw both queens and each looks healthy. More capped brood in C hive than S, and numerous drones in both. Would still like to see a better pattern of capped worker brood in both hives. Destroyed what appeared to be two empty superceder cells in C hive. Contemplating requeening the wild queen with a purchased mated queen. Both hives have an abundance of worker bees. No obvious signs of beetles or disease. Found nothing that looked like swarm cells.

March 13, 2023
Mostly cloudy day in the lower 60s. Removed both covers to swap frames in the honey supers to accomplish two goals: First, get mostly foundationless frames in the supers because I had forgotten I had mostly foundation mediums left for the honey super on the S hive. Ended up doing very little cross mixing of frames from the two hives. Already had foundationless on C hive super put on last week. Managed to get foundationless in the C hive except for the outer two frames on each end. Second, I wanted to move some of the honey frames from the medium brood box up to the honey supers. Writing this two days later, I cannot recall exactly how many, but at least two frames of honey came up for each hive. Another goal for the day was to do another powdered sugar treatment, which was done without extracting most frames. I removed the end frame and systematically went down the box spraying and moving frames to get the bees covered. They did not like it. One bee managed to get in my suit and sting me on the forehead. After hundreds of stings, it still hurts but my body’s reaction is far less than it used to be. I did see some funky comb in the S hive that looked like it might have a couple of queen cells next to each other or simply drone cells formed oddly in the weird comb. I destroyed them hoping the honey super would make them feel like they had more room, but I may have waited too long and they are already in swarm mode. We will see. Both hives now have a single medium honey super with a queen excluder under them.

March 6, 2023
Beautiful early spring day in the lower 80s with very little wind late afternoon. Bees were very busy out foraging. Goal was to give them the second sugar treatment, and man they did not like it. Both hives got loud and ugly. S hive is looking better on the brood front but still have not gotten to an 80% build out in the medium brood box. Will wait at least another week before adding a medium honey super. C hive is busting with brood, pollen and honey. Almost seems like there are too many drones, but there are plenty of worker brood as well. Not much activity in the honey super, probably because they are new, empty frames with no foundation. I took some comb and placed it up there to perhaps jump start them. Queen is laying like crazy in deep and medium brood box. Did not really look for or see either queen.