"Swarm"--3/12/16

[Jacobs]

I'll just have to see how it goes. I had an empty 2 medium hive with drawn comb out beside my other hives. I thought I saw scouts a few days ago, but activity never picked up. These "scouts" stayed with the hive and appeared to be foraging. I looked through the hive yesterday and saw some fresh nectar and about 100 bees. I did not see a queen or eggs. This afternoon, I went through it again and saw an unmarked, stubby little queen walking around. I removed 1 medium and took a frame of mostly capped brood, with some eggs, larvae, and the nurse bees from one of my really strong hives and put it with the swarm, about 3 or 4 frames away from the queen. I'll be curious to see what happens.

[Jacobs]

I saw the queen again. She is not impressive looking and is runny, but I did see 3-4 cells with well placed single eggs in them. I gave these bees a piece of a hard sugar brick since they had very little in the way of honey or nectar. I'll check back in a few days, and if it appears that the queen is picking up the pace of her laying, I will probably boost the hive with another brood frame and nurse bees and add a couple of partial frames of nectar and honey.