Well, May turned out to be quite interesting.   By our 2nd inspection, all of our hives but one had managed to swarm.  However, we had more queen cells created than we have ever seen before with some hives producing as many as eight.  Some hives managed to have no queen cells or had an apparent failure to requeen on their own and so we did a lot of hive management.  We were fortunate to have the help of several mentees (Ryan, Nick, Taylor, and Andy) and two agri-tourists (Chloe and John).  We had enough queen cells on frames with brood that all  7 hives needing queens that were deficient in queen cells received 2-4 queen cells each (whatever was on a single frame) and we created 3 new nucs.    Along the way, we split two hives and we recombined two weaker hives.  By our 2nd inspection, we found that four hives still had not successfully requeened and one hive that had been previously noted to have a weak queen (the hive that didn't swarm) was deemed too weak to continue.  So we ordered 3 Saskatraz queens and added them into two hives and did a coup against the weak queen and requeened that hive.   Two out of the three nucs had successfully queened and we integrated the nucs into the remaining two queenless hives.

Why Saskatraz bees?  We had never tried them previously.  We had used Italians, Golden Cordovans, and Buckfast bees.  For whatever reasons, our Italians had been good producers but had a bad temper over time.  The Cordovans were terribly gentle bees and were not very hearty.  The Buckfast also were not terribly hearty for us.  So, based on the marketing, the Saskatraz aren't supposed to be very aggressive and are supposed to be good producers.  This will be interesting to see how they do.

The flow is certainly well underway in Argyle.  As of our last inspection, all of the hives seemed to be packing in the nectar and a goodly amount of pollen.  We are hoping that with things settling down after the swarms and getting all the hives squared away with new queens that the bees will go into full production of brood and honey.   To help them along the way, the privet trees we planted have started to bloom and our 4 vitex budded out beautifully and started to bloom.  Bees are greedily taking advantage of both...