Making progress with Victoria and Emma
Susan, our surviving hive from last season, is doing well - excellent brood patterns, plenty of bees, full stores in the brood chambers. I put a super on Susan, with our standard thin beeswax foundation. It will be interesting to see how quickly she will fill the super!Emma is doing well, I think. Sh hasn’t filled up the 2nd brood chamber yet, but she’s making solid progress on it. It’s clear that the black plastic foundation with beeswax coating is not a popular with the bees as is the pure beeswax foundation. I’m doubting the wood-versus-plastic is the issue, I think the plastic is not smelling quite right to the girls. Certainly the beeswax coating helps a lot, though.Victoria is lagging, however. She is in a somewhat better location than poor Elizabeth, but still not getting the early morning sun that makes such a difference. It’s their alarm-clock, after all! We’re planning on taking a frame of brood from Susan and adding it to Victoria, and giving Susan another black plastic frame. Those are much easier to see eggs/larvae on.–Justin