Bees update

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It's bee-n over a month since we installed the bee package. And when I first wrote about the bees, I thought that everything was hunky dory.  But shortly after the second week I noticed a big drop in activity in the hive as well as many dead bees just in front of the hive. Thankfully my bee mentor Rob came by to take a look. By then it had been a month and all sorts of bee drama was brewing!

When we opened the hive right away we noticed queen cells. this is not what you would want or expect to see with a young colony.  And it seemed like one of the cells was already empty. We thought is this why there seem to be fewer bees?? Then as we inspected the hive I (the novice) spotted a second queen! We think she must have emerged that very day.  We also noticed a bunch of drone cells that were maturing.  Rob also thought that the brood was not evenly laid. Maybe we don't have such a good queen after all....

The following weekend Rob dropped by again to take a look.  Unfortunately we found yet another queen cell in the works. We cut it out to stop them from rearing another queen, possibly for the young queen to take over the one we just installed. Perhaps the workers know something we don't?

In any case the hive seemed more vigorous and there were young worker bees emerging as we inspected the hive.  Hopefully they will soon join the ranks and begin to get this hive in order.

Today the hive was very active and I'm not sure why. hopefully it is vigor and not robbing or some other bizarre behavior I'm unaware of.





Below are some shots from last Sunday
honey and bee bread
the comb that I forced into a frame
backside
brood frame
can you spot the drone?
can you spot the queen?