Frame Change Continues...

Yesterday's inspection was just to see how the bees are getting on with the new frames, and to see whether I could swap out any more old frames.  The picture was pretty much the same in both hives - comb drawn out on two new frames, but only on one side (the side facing the brood).  There were more bees though - not as many as I'd like, but at least the colonies are building up a little.

Importantly, there was a lot more capped brood, so hopefully that will mean a significant increase in workers soon.  Also, I noticed that Florence's bees had started to make "queen cups".  These are the precursor to queen cells - really, the base of the cell into which the queen will lay an egg that will then grow into a new queen.  If I find an egg in a queen cup, it means the colony are thinking about swarming.  Fortunately, both the cups I found were empty.  Neither colony is big enough to be able to swarm just yet, but I'll need to keep an eye on them for the next few weeks.

Florence's hive seems to have more bees than Miriam's, and just appears to be generally "busier".  So, I decide to swap out an old brood frame for a new one.  The problem - this frame has a lot of capped brood on it.  In a normal year, I would burn the frame with the brood - this seems harsh, but it ensures that any brood diseases are killed, and also kills a fair few varroa, too.  Unfortunately, the cold April has prevented the colonies building up as fast as they normally would.  So, I decided to move the old frame, full of brood, into Miriam's hive.  I must stress I wouldn't normally do this - I am generally fastidious about avoiding cross-contamination between the hives.  But at the moment, with the colony sizes as they are, I've decided to accept the risk, and not waste the brood.

As it was a sunny afternoon, there was a nice amount of activity around the hive entrances: