There is good news and bad news on the bee front.
First the bad news:
We are declaring our Blue Moon Hive to be officially dead. Not surprising, but definitely a bummer.
Here is a picture of Blue Moon's entrance:
Compared with a busy front entrance at Mud Honey:
All signs are pointing to a busy year in the bee world and we're already getting reports of swarms in our area. As a swarm preventative measure, we put three supers on Mud Honey, hoping that they'll not feel too boxed in. They're already filling up the bottom honey super.
And for the good news: You'll remember that we re-queened Mud Honey two weeks ago and we opened up the hive this week for a quick check. We spotted her immediately on the first frame that we withdrew from our deep hive. Those blue dots really stand out. Better yet, we spotted eggs and brood. Hooray! It's about time we had some encouraging news on the hive front.
We had to remove the old queen cage and some comb that was attached. You can clearly see the capped drone cells plus some eggs/larvae.
This is an excellent photo of the eggs. Our queen has carefully glued one egg to the bottom of each cell.
Another photo of the bee eggs:
Young larvae (and a few eggs)
In this series, you can see eggs, young larvae, and some older (larger) larvae.
Older larvae.
Here's another closeup of eggs (A), young larvae [probably only 4-5 days old] (B), and a larva (C) that is about to pupate. She will soon be capped.
