At Paul’s inspection this week, the surviving WBC was observed to be doing well, with lots of eggs and brood present. He still couldn't find the queen but the quantity of visible eggs prove that she must be in there somewhere. The bees have almost filled their second super so a third has been added. As you can see from the photo, it’s looking very tall!
It’s nicely balanced in size by the national hive which is also performing so well that it has received a third super too. Plenty of eggs and brood were present in this hive, and the queen was easy to spot here, which is great.
We now appear to have a colony of wasps in WBC2. We thought we had sealed up the hive after the bee colony had been lost to wasps, but the invaders have been managing to squeeze in and out of the breather holes at the top of the hive. To combat this Paul has sealed up the holes and put out some wasp traps, so hopefully this nest will die off and we can get it emptied and sterilised, ready for a new bee colony.
This is our only troublesome hive, and the good news is that all of the others are busy and there were lots of bees out and about taking advantage of the good weather.
