Spring moves into summer

What a beautiful sight!

Here is one of the nucleus hives started in June. It is building up nicely as you can see. I will need to encourage it to move more toward the back of the hive because it seems to be packing into the front third, but that is not uncommon partly because the nuc came on drawn frames, and all the rest of the frames are foundationless empty frames.

Second nuc

At first glance you may think this nuc is weaker, but actually it is nearly identical, it just has spread itself further back in the hive. I do not need to encourage this one to move where I want it to move.

vertical hive

Here is the top box of the vertical hive, which was inhabited by the swarm. They built burr comb originally because I had left empty space. I put that below and they seem to be building nicely into the second deep box.

The next couple of weeks will be the test to see if the commercial beekeeper returns to my area. He never comes until he is done with pollination, which is usually the beginning of July. If he stays away, we will have a decent crop of honey and three nice strong hives this summer.

We have had a really good clover bloom and now the basswood is on, so there is nothing to prevent the hives from doing great if they can have all the forage out there without undue competition.