It was 50F (10C) again, cloudy, the bees certainly telling me that this was NOT the time to be beekeeping, but at least it didn’t rain. I was able to get a better picture of the wax-dipped cups, now all knobbly and adjusted by the workers. Of interest: one of the first things they did was to narrow the opening. I’ve seen this consistently, even with the wax-only cups.

In Hive 1, I saw some promising signs: an egg!

And even more promising: a charged queen cup. I opened up the entrance slightly to check, and for photos. (The bees should fix it, no problem.) That white in the bottom of the cell, right under the bee’s tush, is royal jelly (and a lot of it). They’re feeding a queen larvae.

Now that I have queens in process, I’ll leave this for a week and then swap this frame for another model. Then I’ll know how many queen cells I have started on this queen bar.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, through the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program under subaward number FNE24-102. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.