Expansion

On Monday, we looked to see if the queen had been released from her cage. Not yet! They did have the sugar chewed down to within 1/8 inch plug remaining, so I trust them to get her out within a day or two. So we did a second round of medication preventatively for American Foul Brood. We also confirmed the bees in all three hives have enough room. They are still in one-story with room for expansion.

I have good success by not giving the bees more room than they need. We will add a second story after the first is full. We don’t add honey supers until the second story is full. Expansion of the hive happens on pace with the population of bees growing.

Fortunately, the two hives with laying queens are growing quickly! We see larvae from freshly hatched eggs at all live stages through capped brood. The eggs we see today will be adult bees in 3 weeks, so population will explode in the upcoming weeks and the queen

I also like to feed the bees early in the season. A rule of thumb that I like is that I feed the bees sugar solution until they fill out the first story. After the bees are strong enough to fill that, I have hope they will take off and fill space exponentially! So today we are replenishing the sugar supply.