When we moved the bees to Mushroom Farm we were left with the colony in Wragby Hive that hopefully had a queen cup left- but we didn't know. So very carefully we opened up the hive to find out what was going on inside. There were still lots of bees- the brood that had continued to hatch out from the first queen. Most of these bees have emerged now, but the brood box was stuffed full of stores- this hive had had a super on from the very first but still no sign of these bees wanting to move up in the world!!
I removed 2 very full frames of stores and replaced them with foundation to give them something to do! (These are the frames I fed to the new hive.)
We did find a small queen cup - but not very big - hopefully this queen will be ok to keep the bees going when she hatches and mates. But this is the next hurdle- will the queen at Mushroom Farm and here mate successfully and get their colonies up and running? Only time will tell......
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