A few things to do today - firstly, I needed to know if hive #2 had started making queen cells from the frame of eggs that I donated last week. This was an easy task - all I needed to do was open up, lift the frame that I put in last week, and look to see what's there. Sure enough, there are two uncapped, but occupied, queen cells - one on each side of the frame. That's very reassuring - I should have a new queen by next weekend. I put the frame back and closed the hive - I won't need to check it for at least 10 days, now.
Second job - have a look in the nucleus, and see if the queen has started laying. I took off the roof, lifted the middle frame, and sure enough - there was the new queen, and she had already laid eggs in nearly half the cells. Great - I can now start planning to build up the nucleus, ready for winter. Also, now that the queen is laying, I can name her (I name all my queens after they've finished mating). I have a couple of ideas already...
Lastly, Miriam's hive. It's really busy now - inspecting the brood box was slow progress, as there were just so many bees in the way! I had to be really careful and meticulous, because there were a few open queen cells containing larvae in various stages of development (I think I counted 5 altogether). I needed to spot them all, and cut them out - otherwise Miriam would likely have swarmed before the weekend.
Miriam's bees are getting into the swing of things now - they've filled 5 frames of honey since I last checked their hive. I've added another super (box of 10 honey frames) on top of the hive - this will give them some extra space, which hopefully will calm their swarming instinct. It also means that they will be able to use it to store more honey, if we have good weather for the next few days.
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