Two weeks

The Monday after I installed the packages was amazingly hot. About 80 degrees in April!

One of the hives was acting strangely. It looked suspiciously like a swarm on the front of the hive. A clump of bees with many more zooming around the yard.

I had realized the day before that I had put the hive-top feeder on wrong and fixed it, but I think the queen was not happy with her accommodations. I wasn't supposed to open the hive and look until Tuesday, and then I was supposed to remove the queen cages so the only thing I could think to do was spray some sugar syrup on the clump of bees and hope that they would go back into the hive. I was hoping they were just warm, and the spray would cool things down.

So the next day I opened up one hive--the one with the bucket feeder--and removed the queen cage. There were about 6 bees inside the cage starting to draw out comb, but no queen. There were lots of bees spread out over about 4 frames so things looked good in that hive. The other hive--the one with the hive-top feeder--also had an empty queen cage, and there were bees building burr comb on the bottom of the queen cage. Again I didn't see a queen, but there were also a lot fewer bees and they seemed to be clumped on 2 frames. This did not look good. I had a bad feeling about that hive, but I was supposed to wait until Saturday to go messing about in the hive so I worked on my patience.

Saturday and Sunday it was supposed to rain, and I was catching a plane for a business trip early Monday morning so I opened up the hives on Friday to see how things looked. Again the hive with the bucket feeder looked good, but the hive with the big fancy hive-top feeder looked poorly so I grabbed a plastic bucket that my horses' supplements came in, cut a hole in the top, got out my glue gun and glued a piece of screen across the hole. Voila! A second bucket feeder. I put that on the the second hive, crossed my fingers, and left town for a week.

Saturday and Sunday after I got back were both very windy days. Not good weather for messing with the hives. I took a quick peek anyway, and thought I saw a queen in the "happy" hive.

Monday, I took another look, and this time I saw what I think is a queen in the not so happy hive. Maybe the problems with the feeder just set that hive back some, or maybe she's not such a great queen; I'm not sure which it is yet, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The happy hive has about 6-7 frames going, but the other has about half that many. There is something capped in the happy hive. I'm not sure if it's honey or brood yet. I fed the Honey B Healthy supplement in the syrup, and everything in the hive appears to be bright yellow. There are also clearly some pollen cells, but I guess I'll just have to watch the capped cells and see what if anything comes out. The not so happy hive has some things capped as well, but a lot less. Patience!