Yesterday Amy and I went through both Aureus and Voyager for a full inspection.
First, Aureus, the long hive:
Aureus is definitely the stronger of our home hives right now, even though it began as a split at the end of June. The last time I went through, I opened the broodnest with empty foundationless frames. Since we are still feeding sugar (10 gallons so far...my kitchen smells like a candyshop!), we hoped that the girls would be encouraged to build more comb. Since it's a split, Aureus started from just 5 frames, and we need to grow them large enough that they will have room for the stores they will need by November.
Well, our hopes were well fulfilled. Each of the empty frames had a substantial amount of new comb, about two full frames worth in total, with eggs and syrup being stored throughout. This hive is strengthening very fast - our major concern will be to keep them in sufficient stores to overwinter.
Now Voyager, the Langstroth hive:
Voyager has had some regime changes of late. First, we took Beatrix from it in June to create Aureus and forced the colony to rear a new queen, Benita. When we looked in last week, we found, to our chagrin, 3 capped queen cells. Not only were we sad to think that Benita might have been superceded, but there was also the chance that the colony was preparing to swarm! A late swarm would have little chance of surviving, but might render Voyager even weaker and prone to parasites. Not only that, but the colony had already had a month-long break in brood rearing while Benita hatched, matured, and took her mating flight. The population would only decline further if the hive reared another virgin queen.
It's not clear exactly what the state of the queen is, but we found most of the queen cells ripped open at the side and one that might have hatched or might have been aborted. But there are still new eggs in the hive!
The egg math allows for two possibilities:
1) Voyager's hive mind decided not to rear a new queen and they dismantled the cells.
2) They reared a daughter queen who will coexist, at least for a while, with Benita. Traditional beekeeping thought holds that the colony has only one queen at a time, but some observant keepers have suggested that mother-daughter teams are much more common than previously though.
Either way is fine with us, just so long as eggs keep being laid.
