The good, the great and the downright Joyful...

First the Joyful
Joy's hive is honeybound. We spent last weekend checking the bees, took out six of her 20 frames, spun out the honey and returned two of those, plus four "blanks" for the bees to make in to honeycomb. And less than a week later, they are filling those up with honey AGAIN! Hello Joy... make babies and put the honey in the people-honey boxes.

There is at least 25lbs of people honey in her hive. There just should be more.

The great!
Sun is AWESOME! She's makin' babies like crazy and filling up the people-honey boxes, or honey supers in bee keeper lingo. Her girls are always a bit jumpier that everyone else, but that seems to be the personality of the hive.

Then the good
Rose is clearly a good queen. The bees are super calm and there are LOTS of them. She might be be just too good of a queen. With all the bees in her hive, even with three honey supers, they are going to swarm. Yep, Rose is leaving and taking a bunch of bees with her. I expect the swarm to leave any day now. When we checked the hive, the very first frame I pulled and an uncapped queen cell and a lovely capped cell. Sigh.

I will keep my eye out for the swarm, but I am not really interested in a fourth hive right now. If I did find it and get it into a box (and that alone would be worth taping for the laugh factor!), I would have to get them going in their own hive. I could combine them with my weakest hive in the fall, but as it is right now, they are going well.

Rose does have a lot of honey on the hive. They have at least 25lbs of people honey ready to go, so I am confident that even with a new queen (who better be a slut and mate with a LOT of drones), we will still have plenty of bees for the winter.

Any name ideas for the daughter of Rose?