We have brood, dude!

Yeah, baby! All is right in the world of our bees! We've seen the queen in Hive 2 and Hive 1 has eggs and brood on 3 different frames. Ahhhh, life is good...

My mom and dad came from San Jose to visit us for a few days. They've enjoyed the blog so I knew they would both enjoy helping me work the bees. After getting Dad decked out in the bee suit we fired up the smoker and dove into Hive 2. Second frame in, there she was! A beautiful laying queen with half a frame of capped brood, young larvae and eggs (pic 2 Can you find the queen?). She has to have been raised by the hive. The queen cell on the frame we put in last week has not had time to hatch, breed and lay this much brood in a week. Now we have to feed, feed, feed to get more honey put away. I added another patty and put a gallon of 2:1 in the feeder.

Then it was on to Hive 1. Hive 1 has 2 deeps and a medium and is the hive in which we installed the nuc last week. We first looked at the medium and found zero brood and little honey. i added it to make sure they didn't swarm last weekend. On initial inspection of the 1st deep we found the first 3 frames loaded with honey. The 4th frame is from the nuc. There we found the first bit of brood. We struck pay dirt on the center side of the frame and continued for the next 2 frames. We never saw the queen but there was a lot of capped brood, larvae, and eggs. I'm amazed this queen made it withth e battles that were going on outside the hive. Compared to the light golden yellow capped brood the Italian queens have produced, this brood is much darker brown–telling me the Buckfast queen made it and is doing her thing. (pic 4) Again, a patty and 2:1 for all.

What a wonderful relief having both hives queen right heading into winter. Now they both have a chance to make it. I am not hedging my bets though as I have decided not to chemically treat for nosema or varroa. I sugared the bees, ran drone frames and closely visually inspected them all summer long. I've seen 1 mite and have had success with the drone frames. My initial plan was to raise the bees as holistically as possible and until I see signs of disease, I'm not going to treat. My only hesitance is not treating for nosema, however I've spoken with several local beeks who say they do not treat and have no problem. I've learned a lot of lessons this year the hard way. Time will tell if my bees will pay the price or reap the gains of this last, very major decision.