It has been a rather dry spring so far and we have been waiting on the flowers to really start blooming and the nectar flow to really get going.  Finally, the blooms are starting, but very slowly where we have our hives in Argyle. 

Michelle and I were lucky to have the benefit of two mentees, Shawn and Nick join us for hive inspections.  I think they have gotten to see more than they expected.  Wanting them to benefit from seeing as much as possible, we started with our largest hives and went from there.   Of course that benefits us as well as many hands make for light work.  All of the hives inspected on the first day seemed to be doing quite well in terms of being queen-right, good laying patterns, sufficient brood, and moderate stockpiles of food (honey/syrup).

While we had been feeding occasionally through the month of March, hives with good stores of honey or syrup had their feeders removed and given honey supers with queen excluders.  We thought that the excluders were going to be necessary as all of our queens were laying throughout the hives (most were either two deeps and a medium or one deep and two mediums).

We were in the process of deciding which hive to do next when we spotted Alpha hive swarming, literally pouring out of the reduced entrance on the front.   We tried tanging which seemed to have no influence on the bees' behavior and we opted to inspect the hive (comprised of two deeps) and see what we had left.  We had brood and capped queen cells in both deeps along with quite a few bees in each and we separated the two deeps (walk away split) creating their own hives and gave them feeders of syrup....hoping the remaining attendees and brood will bring the queens to fruition and that the queens will be successful in mating.   As expected, we found no remaining queen.

Day 2  Nick and I inspected the last 3 hives.  Bravo hive was interesting and needed some help.  We ended up borrowing capped honey/syrup from one hive with a surplus to supplement Bravo that was LOADED with brood and very little stored food.  It still amazes me how hives can develop so differently despite being in close proximity and with similar access to resources.  Bravo was also given a feeder with syrup and we will inspect it again in a couple of weeks to see if it is managing to bring in sufficient nectar on its own and if so, be taken off the supplemental feeding.

Most of the hives were generally in good shape given the conditions we have been having.  We did take the opportunity with this first full inspection of the year to look at the wooden ware and switch out boxes in need of repair with others in better shape.

We have just had some more rain and more is on the way.  Hopefully, the flowers will be in full bloom soon...