Booming. They filled up the first eight frames with brood in 2 weeks. Added a second box May 9. Going today for an inspection - will likely add another box today.
South Hives:
Inspected the package hive on May 3 to find no queen, some very limited brood and what looked like queen cells:
I posted this on G+ and some helpful Frenchman remarked that he thought they looked like "false" queen cells, and we in fact drone cells. I decided to leave them alone and see if they make a queen. There were still lots of bees in the hive.
Yesterday (May 16) I inspected this hive again and found that those cells had been torn down. I could not find a queen and did not see eggs or larvae. It's possible there's a queen in there who has not started laying yet, but I decided to add two frames of mixed brood to this hive anyway to prop up the numbers and give them some eggs/young larvae to work with if they want to make a new queen.
The Survivor hive is coming along nicely. It has about 10 full frames of brood as of yesterday, which is 7 full frames more than it had on May 2. Third box has 7/10 frames full of brood but I don't know if there are bees in the bottom box at all. Next time I inspect I'll likely add another box and let the honey production begin!
Plans for today are to inspect the North hive again and assess the possibility of doing a split from it. Queen cells will be available June 1 from the club's queen rearing project.
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