Went to check on the bees I moved from the abandoned house last month. When last I looked, they were 2 deeps, packed full of brood and honey. I added a shallow super with drawn comb.
This time: The shallow was completely empty still. Upper deep was darn near solid honey. Dang it, this meant I had to heft that one off of there to check below.
Lower deep: Honey in the corners of the frames. As I looked through frames: No brood. On about the 5th frame, I found a queen cell, not yet capped. At that point I stopped looking so as not to damage that or any other queen cell.
I'm batting zero on keeping queens alive. This is getting quite disheartening. I am wondering now about what another local beekeeper told me... that bees in my yard are doomed due to the proximity to the neighboring farm/shrub nursery and their herbicides and pesticides. Argh! That would mean they probably would have been fine if I hadn't moved them in the first place.
