Week 9 and the BeeHiveCastle is thriving! The bees were completely calm throughout the inspection with no head butting at all, always a great sign of a content and queenright colony. We inspected all 8 frames in the bottom box and everything looks beautiful.
The bottom brood box is packed with healthy bees, fresh eggs, larvae and capped brood on every frame. The colony is at peak health heading into summer. We also spotted a waggle dance happening live on Frame 8 where food stores are being kept, a forager was communicating the location of a food source to her nestmates with that amazing figure-eight dance! Always a magical thing to witness up close.
We decided to take a quick peek at the second box lid without pulling frames, the bees are clearly actively drawing fresh comb on the new frames and the box is filling out nicely. We will do a full second box inspection next week once they have had more time to build it out.
We found Her Majesty on the middle frame of the second box during a quick lid check! She was not expected to be there since we were only peeking at the top without pulling frames, which made the sighting even more exciting. She had a small amount of white paint transferred from her thorax to her wings from last week's marking but was moving confidently and looking healthy.
The queen moving up into the second box is a great sign, it means the colony is expanding upward and she has room to keep laying. We will confirm next week whether she has started laying in the second box frames. 👑🐝
