Hello all. So this year I hope to increase my colony count as my main goal and get enough honey to fund bee projects. I have already installed two packages and created two Nucs. Unfortunately one of the Nucs never released the queen and now has laying workers. Grumble grumble. So I took the still caged queen and made up another nuc. I gave it a frame of egg/new,y hatched larvae. I caught it early so I am hoping they raise a queen from it on the first try. So as of this afternoon my apiary consists of three overwintered hives, two packages, and three Nucs (one with the laying worker issue). I was feeling a bit down about the laying worker issue. Kind of a big downer when you have such big goals, although I was still hopeful that maybe the laying worker thing would eventually get sorted out and I'd end up with another nuc.
My two year old wanted to go on a 4 wheeler ride so we drove around the property. We typically go by a couple of swarm traps I set out this spring. I wasn't that convinced I'd ever get a swarm. I had not seen any bees here until I moved my bees here. Typically when me and my daughter go by our swarm traps she says "no bees...no bees daddy." This time we go by and "Bees! Bees daddy!" I actually caught a swarm. I am 99% sure the are not from my hives. I have very recently been in all my overwintered hives. Two are just barely in a second deep. One is in three deeps and fills them up. Just a few days ago there were no queen cells. Saw eggs today when I was looking for brood to make up new nuc.
So I'm very pumped. I went from kinda down to outright giddy! They have a laying queen. I had to check to make sure that there was an actual swarm that had moved in. I saw the queen. They have built a little comb. There are eggs. I did not see any larvae, although I could have missed it in my excitement. When the sun goes down I'll move them to my hive stand, which is now getting pretty full.
I tried to attach a video, but it was to large to attach.