Well, my bees have been making themselves at home for 10 days, and I decided to go in and take a look at what they have been up to. I waited for a warm sunny day, and opened the hive about 11am.
The bees had expanded to the new frames on either end of the old nuc frames, and were building lots of new comb, much of it already filled with nectar.
I did find the queen, which was fun, she is right in the middle of this picture and her body is black, compared to the rest of the bees.
After investigating the frames, seeing lots of capped brood, and a busy queen, I noticed a couple frames had queen cups. A queen cup is a cell that is larger than the others, protrudes out from the rest, and has an opening on the bottom. This is a sign that the bees are getting ready to swarm, and those need to be removed.
Here is a photo of the queen cup, it's hard to see, because it is covered with bees, the group right in the corner of the frame with about 4-5 bees clustered together.
After removing the queen cup ( also called swarm cells) the bees should relax and spread out more, and get down to the business of populating their new large space.
We know they were swarm cells because of the position of them on the frame, being placed down at the bottom. If the bees had made a queen cell somewhere at the top of the frame, that means that the original queen bee is failing in her duties, and they are planning to supersede her, and raise a new queen. That's okay, and we would not remove that queen cell. Anyway, all is well, I refilled the feeder and left them to their jobs!
The bees had expanded to the new frames on either end of the old nuc frames, and were building lots of new comb, much of it already filled with nectar.
I did find the queen, which was fun, she is right in the middle of this picture and her body is black, compared to the rest of the bees.
After investigating the frames, seeing lots of capped brood, and a busy queen, I noticed a couple frames had queen cups. A queen cup is a cell that is larger than the others, protrudes out from the rest, and has an opening on the bottom. This is a sign that the bees are getting ready to swarm, and those need to be removed.
Here is a photo of the queen cup, it's hard to see, because it is covered with bees, the group right in the corner of the frame with about 4-5 bees clustered together. 
After removing the queen cup ( also called swarm cells) the bees should relax and spread out more, and get down to the business of populating their new large space.
We know they were swarm cells because of the position of them on the frame, being placed down at the bottom. If the bees had made a queen cell somewhere at the top of the frame, that means that the original queen bee is failing in her duties, and they are planning to supersede her, and raise a new queen. That's okay, and we would not remove that queen cell. Anyway, all is well, I refilled the feeder and left them to their jobs!
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