Sugar syrup, pollen, and eggs in brace comb. cell indicated by finger contains twins! Click image to enlarge.Present: Bud and I, Mohammad on the SLR camera (some great shots!)
Equipment: No major changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Removed Queen cages and replaced 10th frame in each deep. Brace comb removed from space between frames and queen cage. Added sugar syrup.
Observations: Queens were released and appear to be doing well, though neither was spotted. Saw eggs in brace comb removed from each hive! Small amounts of pollen and sugar syrup in the comb removed. The bees cleaned up the sugar syrup when the comb was left in front of the hive overnight. The Italians seemed to actually chew up a bit of the comb, hopefully taking the wax inside to build up the empty frames. The Italians had started building comb on the plastic foundation, the Russians had not. The Italians also took more sugar syrup and are visibly more actively foraging. Russian colony is definitely less vigorous this early in the season. Hopefully the queen is good and they’ll catch up.
