Busy time of year and so this blog is a bit late.   April showers failed to bring May flowers as we were in a bit of a drought in April.  What little rain we did get did help get the local wildflower population going, but not what we were hoping to see had we gotten sufficient rain.  For us, the flow is more of a trickle rather than a flood.  Now that May has started, the rains have come and we are hopeful that resources will be come more available very soon.

We started off April with 11 hives, sold one, and then things got really interesting.  In doing inspections early in the month, we discovered that two hives had swarmed, leaving behind a goodly amount of brood, nurse bees, and capped queen cells, lots of capped queen cells.  With the help of Nick, Sara, and Ryan, we did inspections, added honey supers to hives that were in good shape, moved resources between some hives, and did several splits.  We finished off the first inspections with 11 hives, two of which had or had been given frames with capped queen cells, and three nucs that were set up each with at least one frame of brood, one frame of brood with a couple of queen cells, two frames of honey/nectar, and a drawn out frame for expansion.  Things were looking good.

End of the month inspections were not as promising.  We had another hive depleted due to swarming.  This swarm apparently ended up in our neighbor's tree about 20 feet up and another DCBA member was able to successfully capture it.   Only one of the two split hives with queen cells was queen-right and there was no indication any of the nucs were queen-right despite queens having hatched.  We combined the hive that had swarmed (but that had capped queen cells) with the remaining hive that wasn't queen-right in hopes of one of the queens surviving and saving the combined hive.  Otherwise, we may be purchasing queens. 

Of the remaining strong hives, most seem to be putting away some surplus nectar.  The honey supers are being put to use.  With a bit of luck, we will be maintaining 10 hives which is about ideal for our situation.