Well, it’s been almost two months since my last post. I’ve been busy, but haven’t we all.

When last we spoke, my hive had swarmed – twice. I was pretty upset, because I knew that this would effectively dash my hopes of harvesting any significant amount of honey this year. I was also worried that I had not gotten the queens into the boxes when I recovered the swarms. I checked at one and two week intervals, and found no new eggs or larvae.

I was seriously considering buying a couple of queens and trying to save them, or recombine them into the original hive. None of these alternatives really appealed to me.

Finally, about two weeks ago, while doing a routine check of the hives, I found that both new hives had babies. Not just babies. They had lots of babies. They were flourishing. Even the original hive, the one who’s brood chamber I had to reorganize, was going gangbusters. The picture below is a frame of brood from the original hive. Life is good.