South Hive

I was really curious to see what was going on in here, since I’d seen a queen on 4/12, but not many eggs. There were more bees than I saw at the last inspection, and they were covering more frames. Here’s what else I noticed

• Frame 1 from the south: bee bread
• Frame 2: bee bread on one side
• Frame 3: pollen, drones on one side
• Frame 4: drones; some eggs, some were not centered
• Frame 5: some eggs, one per cell, centered. Possibly some queen cells being built. This is the spot where I noted that I’d swap frames with the north hive.
• Frame 6: heavy with nectar. This is the frame I decided to swap out for a frame of eggs from the north hive.
• Frame 7: heavy with nectar
• Frame 8: honey, nectar, very heavy
• Frame 9: almost full of honey
• Frame 10: a little honey, but had a lot of room

North Hive

I was so curious to see what was going on here since I’d added a queen excluder and a honey super. As soon I removed the top cover, I could see bees through the hole in the inner cover. This was pretty exciting, as it meant that they had moved through the excluder and had discovered the expanded area they now had to store honey.

• Frame 2: Saw some pretty red pollen, pictured above!
• Frame 3: A lot of eggs. I thought this might be a contender for a swap into the south hive.
• Frame 4: Capped brood, pollen, older brood, more of it capped. More red pollen!
• Frame 5: Capped brood, nectar
• Frame 6: Eggs

At this point I was pretty satisfied with how things looked and returned to frame 3 to prepare it to be swapped into the other hive. As I was taking one last look at it, the queen caught my eye! I’d never spotted the queen in this hive before, and I’m so glad I saw her before I accidentally sacrificed her by putting her in the other hive. A foreign queen gets “balled,” where the workers who don’t recognize her pheromones clump around her and attack. They vibrate their wings while attacking, raising the temperature and stinging her until she dies.

Since she was on frame 3, I didn’t consider using frame 4 for a swap in case she wandered over there. Frame 6’s tiny fresh eggs seemed like the best bet.

So I swapped frame 6 in the top box of the north hive for frame 6 in the south hive. I’m hoping the workers there are able to turn one of those tiny new eggs into a queen who mates well and can get the south hive back on track.