Thursday, July 11, 2013

Checking if the hives are Queen-right


Two days ago I inspected all the hives to see if they have newly laid eggs which indicates that the colony is Queen-right. I opened one after the other and found new eggs :) All Virgin Queens are mated :)
One of the small nucleus hives had no honey stores left so I gave them one comb from a strong hive with honey and pollen and already the next day they started building another comb :)
This small colony had a few cells with dead bees in them but none of the dead bees are in liquid form but rather dry. I'm not sure why they didn't clean those cells. Too few house bees maybe? Anyway I will inspect this hive in a week to make sure those cells are not turning into an American Foulbrood (AFB) which is highly contagious. In case of AFB the whole hive must be burned and the Bee Inspector informed so they can check all apiaries in the 3 km ratio to make sure AFB didn't spread.

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