recent updates

new package installed (in the old tbh from the peczuh farm)
wooten golden italian queen from abeez honey in SF.
had been in package for quite a bit and were ornery

already laying eggs


inspected queen hives
empty queen cups everywhere

drones everywhere
eggs and larva everywhere
no room to expand at all

i figure 2 weeks till swarming - i gotta do some splits

i cut out 5 day old larva (my best guess) and put them on the queen frame along with 2  frames of mixed brood 1 frame of pollen and some honey. kind of mangled the cells a bit but we'll see what happens. had shaken off all bees from combs before moving to queen nuclei but by the time i closed up the hives, the brood was covered by nurse bees

Checked on 4 colonies this weekend.
Queen breeder box left: - very strong colony. Still plenty of honey stores and pollen. I removed some honey that was in weird cross comb. Straightened up other comb where I could. Removed all the zip ties left over from last summers rearrangement. I didn't see the queen.
Lots of capped brood. Every empty cell I could find had an egg in it (even several frames into the honey stores at the bottom) Lots of drones about too.

Queen breeder box right - also very strong. Removed a little bit of cross comb where I could. Also removed all the zip ties that I had used to reattach comb when I rearranged it last summer. Tons of drone comb! Lots of drones too. Quite a bit of capped worker brood. Didn't see the queen or many eggs. Some of the drone comb that broke off I left in the end of the hive where they could get to it to clean it out.

Rosier colony.
Not a lot of honey. A little bit on the very top of about 10 bars. pollen here and there. Lots of eggs. I found the queen. Also saw drones and drone comb. The brood area was 7 frames.
There seemed to be quite a bit of red debris on the bottom mixed with the chewed wax bits (mite shells?) I collected it and brought it home in a bottle to examine. I did find mites in a few of the drone cells that I broke open. I opened the bottom board. I'm wondering about feeding this one.

Brent Johnson Colony.
Appeared strong. Lots of activity at the entrance. Lots of pollen coming in.
They were not in the 3rd box at all. But I could see that they had built out the bottom (double box) completely. Quite a bit of  bur comb between frames so I opted not to remove any bars in the bottom box. It was a bit windy by then too.