second brood boxes added today

I looked at all my recently hived nucs and found all the new queens and saw some eggs she had laid. Quite a color contrast between the black queens and the lighter workers! I saw wall to wall bees and added second brood boxes today. Dave Blum caught a swarm from one of his (overwintered?) hives today. I'm pretty sure our nucs will want to swarm, especially if they feel crowded. One of my newly hived nucs had hundreds spilling out the front of the hive - that was my clue to add boxes.

queens free now!

This morning (Thursday April 12) I checked all five of my new nucs to see if the worker bees had released their queen. They had. I didn't want to disturb the colony to look for eggs. I'll wait until next week to check to make sure she's laying.