Spring Has Sprung

the girls are back and so the beekeepers' work has resumed.  we made our first inspection of our hives on April 24th.  Jamaica's and Rosie's hives were 

           

          Jamaica

Rosie

going gangbusters. we saw many frames of eggs, larva and brood in each. With both of them doing so well, we decided to put them on a swarm watch, with the idea of preventing a swarm if possible. 

we carefully inspected Astoria's hive and alas, we saw no eggs, larva or brood, no sign of Astoria and a greatly reduced number of bees in the hive.  after consulting with Peggy and Richard (our bee-mentors) we guess that Astoria probably passed away sometime earlier in the spring.  she was one of our original queens from Bob Egan and we figured that she had been born in the summer of 2010, which would have made her nearly 3 years old. she was an amazing queen and wonderful egg-layer.  after she swarmed last year, she repopulated her new hive in record time. many of the pictures of perfect brood frames in this blog were from her hive last year. of course, we were very sad to lose her, however, Peggy and Richard suggested that we insert frames of eggs, larva and brood from Jamaica's hive (Astoria's daughter) so that the remaining bees could make a new queen for themselves.  we did that and are now eagerly awaiting Astoria's granddaughter!

finally, we took a look through crazy Katherine's hive and saw some brood, larva and eggs, although not nearly as much as we would have liked to see.  we're not sure if Katherine was able to mate well in the autumn last year. we did see her, but, I have to confess that she looked rather thin and small - not at all plump and rotund like a well-mated queen should look.  we added a couple of frames of brood from Rosie's hive to help out Katherine's colony, and we will give her some more time to get laying before we make any decisions about her.