The Golden Fox's Bees!

So I finally got the time and weather to check on the first new move-in since the mosquito spray incident a couple springs ago. Sure enough they built the new comb diagonal to the frames, but honestly I’m ok with it since the next frames are alternating plastic foundation and empty so they should straighten out nicely. That’s a good 5.5 frames of diagonal comb which as far as I can see is chock full of brood, bread, honey, and fresh perfectly centered eggs. Since it’s June and they’re still this small I’ll probably be feeding them over the winter to make sure they persist, because I really want them to stick around as the other hives still seem to be toxic to new inhabitants. (Though one of them did have a red wasp nest survive in it, and it’s so big now I’m going to leave it just because wasps are good too.)

Here’s hoping they do stick around! The tiny colony that moved in to the Super Hive was queenless so I set them out next to this colony in the hopes they merge with them. There was only one wee piece of comb with an empty queen cup so they were obviously not going to make it on their own.