Since 2020 my pond business has been so busy it's been tough to do more for the bees than shoot some OAV in the hives in the later summer and another dose in December (or when I quit seeing brood)
Had a bunch of dead bees in front of the swarm hive about a month ago, took a day off to have a look and found they were starving young bees because the old queen stuffed 2 deeps and a medium full of brood then took off to mate, I don't think a swarm left - maybe the old queen failed to get off the ground and they all went home.
I divided the bees into 6 boxes - stuck a feed jar on each of them, checked my beeweaver hive, their lady was also gone for a mate but normal numbers and plenty of honey. so I left them alone, and ordered 2 queens, a just in case for them and a replacement for the swarmy one when she came back.
Today, finally my beeweaver queens came, after the post office was 2 days late, fortunately we had mild weather. I'd merged 2 of the 6 when they seemed too small - they still failed and were full of wax moth larva, no bees, might have been robbed by my other hives or simply gone home, their brood died on hatching due to no attendants.
But the others, well one box, not the one I expected, had a queen laying, lots of uncapped brood, probably swarmy dna but I didn't see her so I didn't hunt her down.
The big hive's original deep was full of bees, no laying workers, so they got a queen.
I'll merge the last 2 tomorrow morning before the workers leave and get lost, I guess put the nuc on top of the 10 frame and tape a board over the rest of that box, newspaper combine with some vanilla syrup spray. No laying workers in any, I'm thrilled with that. Guess the timing was right.
I try to not have more than 2 hives, it's all the local forage will support, so I will be selling a couple after they are fit to sell, or if the swarm queen lays too much she may have a hive tool test later and those bees added to a better hive. boy it's a lot of work, but it was pretty fun.
Hard to get a day off around here.
