How are the bees?

I inspected the bees a few days ago and found them in pretty good shape, but not ‘developing’ as quickly as I had hoped. The two old hives still have queen excluders on with signs of a little comb being built. Hive A is still brimming with bees and I believe that they have plenty of honey stored in the brood area. Maybe I will be able to extract some of that honey later this summer. Hive B is not as busy at the entrance nor does it seem as full inside, but is a good strong hive for this time of year. Both A and B have new queens this year.

Hive C still has the burr comb in the feeder, but without the queen excluder on it is now (I think) being filled back up with honey. I don’t think there is any brood in it, but am not sure. A few weeks ago I added a medium brood box on top of the deep and under the feeder and there is still plenty of room in that box.

Hive D is the first swarm hive which should have one of the original queens from either A or B, but I found the queen and she is not marked (both queens from A and B last year had white marks for 2011). So I am a bit stumped. Maybe that queen was superseded either before or after it swarmed. Maybe the white dots can wear off. I’m not really sure, but in any case hive D is busting out with bees. I didn’t look in the bottom brood box, so I don’t know if there were any queen cells, but I did get a queen excluder and a new medium box on top. I hope I got the new box on in time. Most of the pictures are from hive D.

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Hive E is a swarm from hive C (2012 Georgian bees) and although I believe hive C swarmed twice, hive E was from the first swarm. I haven’t found the queen yet, but it should also be marked. It had a white dot when I got it in March even though it should have been yellow for 2012.