After a few weeks of no visits to the hive.... and worrying about whether the hive had successfully superseded their queen, we were rewarded today with a direct witnessing of the queen doing her job. The picture above shows a nice shot of the queen in the center of the frame. It was fun watching her lay a few eggs. Also, there were quite a few larvae in the cells and we should have a nice boost in the population in the next few weeks. It's a good feeling knowing the colony is just delayed rather than headed for disaster.
I noticed there were still only about two frames mostly drawn out. Two more were about half drawn out and the rest in the deep hive body were almost completely untouched. I was hoping things would have progressed well beyond this point by now, but at least the hive appears to be on the right track.
On another note, I opted not to use the veil which turned out to be ok since the colony is still pretty small.... but I need to get out of this practice as things will probably heat up once things get into full swing. Although my daughter really liked the beekeeper garb. She's the one sporting the veil and gloves in the picture above. Maybe we have another budding beekeeper on our hands ;)
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