Before heading off to the “Team Bees” apiary, I went through my hives at home. Nothing too exciting going on… One colony needed supers and another looks to be superseding. In another colony I found the queen, but most of her red paint spot has rubbed off. I trapped her in a marking cage and repainted the spot, then left her there whilst I inspected the other frames. By the time I put her frame back in the hive, workers had piled onto the top of the cage and almost wiped the paint spot off again! No big deal. It’s better than it was, so I let them get on with it.
My plan at the “Team Bees” apiary was to inspect the colony and replace undrawn frames with “fat dummies” as part of my experiment to run hives as “nine over nine” this year. When we got there it was clear that the queen had gone into overdrive and actually of the twenty-two frames in the double brood box nest, only four frames in the bottom box remained undrawn. That was sufficient to use the fat dummies, but I had to move two frames from the top box down to the bottom box to make room. The queen has been laying like crazy too. Quite a few frames in the top box were solid capped worker brood. I suspect it’s going to be a very busy hive soon. I’ll have to take some supers with me next week in case they’re needed.