Jen's swarm hive inspection overview w/pics

[Jen]

Yesterday I posted a thread on the cells in my swarm hive. Comments came back that the queen doesn't appear to be laying right. So here's some more pics. Appreciate your input 

wax moth worm/larvae found trying to wiggle it's way under the lid


new wood/wired wax being pulled nicely


one lone larva and patchy brood


Queen! it hurts my feelings when I know she may be destroyed 


Scraped a bunch of thick drone brood off of the bottom of the frames


Carnage! ~ Boy! the bees sure don't like when there is drone juice squirting all over ~ BLECH!


A full frame of brood, but some of it might be capped honey, this frame looks pretty good to me?

[Perry]

Relax, if that last frame is from this hive you have a nice looking frame of brood and what appears to be a decent queen.

[Jen]

Perry! kisshug  patpatpat   

[LazyBkpr]

Indeed!  Thats a nice looking frame right there.

[Dunkel]

Nice pattern Jen. Nothing to worry about there.  Well I guess there is always something to worry about.  Enough room, enough supers etc.,  that's the fun thing about beekeeping. It's always no matter what's going on you are always asking  "Now what do I do next?"

[pistolpete]

the third picture down where you say you have patchy brood:  you have to take into account that this is near the edge of the frame.   A normal brood pattern is a circle or crescent of brood occupying the middle 60 to 80% of the frame.  The margins are left empty for nectar and pollen storage.   The hive and queen has to be super strong to get edge to edge brood.   The queen looks nice and big and symmetrical, if you decide to put up with the swarm happy genetics, give her a chance.

O another note:  Drones are good for hive morale.  The girls get a bit depressed with no boys around.  So you don't want to eliminate drone brood entirely.    Because you are supplying them with 100% worker sized foundation, they take every chance they can to build a few drone cells.   They can only do so at the edges of frames, which is why you see a few scattered drone cells there.