Another interesting time in the bee yard. Checked on the new queens I put in three of the home hives last Saturday. None had been released and one was dead in here cage. I released the two others on the top of the frames and they both flew off rather than go in the hive. Luckily, one of them made it back to the hive and was found today. One of the hives had wax moths on the outsides of both end frames and few bees so I busted it down to a nuc and added more bees and capped brood from my strong hive. I put the extra frames in the freezer to kill the wax moth larvae. Today, I combined the new and old nucs to make a new 10 frame hive. I’ll combine the hive with the dead queen with the new hive to make a double deep and split it later. Checked the Leon hives today. Both my banked queens were dead in their cages. The two new queens there had not been released so I released them both successfully and was able to mark one of them. Hive two from last week’s split had capped queen cells and hive 1 has a laying queen. Number 3 has one of the released queens. Hive 4 is drawing out their 4th honey super. Hive 5 from the Full Moon nuc is drawing frames in their honey super and the new nuc has the other newly released queen.
Ran into a group from the Thrive Farmer Training Program that we’re touring the Leon EO as part of their training program. Talked bees and ABA with them, caught and marked a queen for them and gave them a frame of honey.