W.H.A.T.
The rainy weather forecasted for the week has mostly been at night, with partly cloudy and sunny days. I know I said previously that I wouldn’t be touching the hives for a couple of weeks but plans do change. I initially went out just to heft the Roman honey super to get a feel for how it was filling up. To my amazment there were hundreds of dead bees in front of the hive and they were stinking.
Today I released the new Italian queen into the Pasta hive. She has only been in there for 4 days, but it appears from yesterday’s inspcetion they have accepted her. It’s supposed to rain for nearly a week straight so I wanted to release her today.
After letting her go I could see they had eaten about 3/4 of the way through the hole in the candy, so she probably would have been out by tomorrow anyway. Plus I wanted to watch and make sure they had really accepted her. She looks happy to be out, but not nearly as they do
It looks like everything went fine. I think she even started to lay? That’s it for now. I’ll wait 2 weeks until the next inspection to let her get settled and by that time there should be larva and pupa.
I inspected all five hives today so this will be a long post. You’ve been warned! I was disappointed in a couple of the hives until I stepped back later and thought about it.
