The Best Easter Eggs Of All – Queen Eggs

My biggest hurdle of beekeeping is not mites, moths, or beetles – it’s self-doubt. It took all my resolve to go out to the bee yard at Dr. D’s.   Actually, Noah wanting to go with me is what tipped the scales.

I would have gone anyway, but it might have been later Saturday or even Sunday – hell I might have waited until today! It’s like having a workout partner – some days you don’t feel like it but you go to keep from letting your partner down.

So I went. And it was wonderful! I swear that kid is good luck. All the hives are doing well.

This is the order I checked them:

Hive-D.1 is weak but the queen is laying eggs now.

Hive-D.2 was much stronger with two frames of brood.

Hive-B had several frames of brood and had drawn out nice straight comb on the foundationless hives.

Hive-A had a little brood. However, when I handed Noah the frame of brood so I could continue my inspection, he found the biggest, fattest, orange tailed queen I think I have ever seen.

Hive-C is doing well but I haven’t opened it for a proper inspection given that it has anger issues.

Lastly, Hive-D is slammed full of drones – obviously queenless.

So here is what I did:

Hive-A was fed but then left alone (Though this would have been a great time to split it since I had the queen in hand).

Hives at Dr. D's

Hive-B was fed and I took out one frame of uncapped brood and placed it in Hive-D.1 (in retrospect, Hive-D.1 is so small they may not be able to keep that whole frame of brood warm enough.)

I took a frame of eggs out of Hive-D.2 and placed them in Hive-D so that they could raise a new VSH queen.

Then I topped off the sugar syrup in all the hives and called it a day.

I got stung three times – once through my suit into my chest and twice on my neck though my veil. Two of them left no lingering signs. However, one of the ones on my neck still had the stinger in it when I got back to the truck and looks like a mosquito bite this morning.

Hive Count: 9