Today was the day…we planned to get all our other chores done, then open up hive 2 to check on Kona and what she’d done over the last week. Around noon, we opened it up and low and behold……she was still in her queen box! 🙁 What’s supposed to happen is that the box is sealed up with a piece of sugar candy and the queen’s attendants eat it from the inside while the worker bees in the hive it it from the outside until it’s all gone and the queen can exit the box into the hive. We’d read that it should take 3 days or so for the bees to ‘release’ the queen, but apparently that doesn’t always happen. So, we pulled the box out, pried back the screen and let her out. Hopefully she’s been busy all day laying eggs and making up for lost time.
Hives 1 and 3 are doing great. Tons of bees, tons of capped honey. I mean, look at this photo with the honey dripping right off of the bottom of the frame. I think they should be able to, with the sugar water we’re feeding and the still-present fall flowers, to make enough honey stores to get thru the winter.
There are a couple new photos on the photos page if you want to see more pictures of today’s inspection.
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