Despite our best wishes for our two nucs, one failed.  The other one was doing very well and we moved it back into a full size 10 frame box during the first weekend in July.  We are continuing to feed it and two of our other hives that seemed to be full of bees and shy on stored resources.

On Wednesday, July 6, Michelle was checking bees, watering plants, and went to feed the three hives that needed food and one hive swarmed in front of her.  This hive is called Juliet.  We are in the middle of drought conditions with no significant rain in over a month.  The cause for the swarm is unclear.  We thought maybe the queen opted to leave because of the lack of resources.  So we ordered and picked up a new Italian queen and opted to examine the hive during our weekend inspections.

Saturday came and we were joined by Sherri, Kathy, and Elizabeth, the latter two of which were completely new to beekeeping.  Our first order of the day was to inspect Juliet.  Despite having swarmed, we found that Juliet was still chock full of brood, bees, and had a goodly amount of stored honey (see images).  We installed the new queen and set about checking our other hives.  Our one remaining Saskatraz queen still appears to be doing very well and is very productive with a good laying pattern.  All the other queens also seem to be doing just fine with their royal duties.

A few patterns were apparent in our inspections.  Despite the drought and apparent lack of wildflowers, all of the hives seemed to be doing a good job of accumulating nectar and making honey.  Pollen was not in short supply, either.   With the exception of just one hive, all of the hives seemed to be of good disposition and not terribly defensive.   We saw no live hive beetles and only a handful of dead ones that had been trapped in oil traps or on Swiffer sheets.  We saw only one wax moth and no spiders.   Examination of the brood revealed only a couple of empty queen cups, plenty of female brood, and virtually no drone brood.  As a bonus, we even managed to pull a few frames of honey. 

As for the swarm bees, we know exactly where they are and there doesn't seem to be much we can do about them.  They are about 20 feet up (inset photo) on a dead tree limb and have started building comb on the tree.  Currently, we have no way to access the bees safely.