Late spring report

In the past week I inspected hives 1,2 & 3.
Hive 1. I spotted the queen; the original queen with her orange dot.  She's now 2 years old (like Olea, almost).  Soon she will be superseded or I'll need to replace her.  She's already escaped one replacement.  I didn't check for brood, nor do I recall seeing much.  The queen was in the upper brood box.  At one time it was recommended to switch brood boxes so the queen would be in the lower box, but these days many beekeepers just let her alone and she eventually moves into the lower box.  There is still a lot of capped honey in the deep boxes and the honey super was filling up so I put on the second super.  Even though I don't recall seeing brood, the hive appears strong.  There were a lot of bees in the Vivaldi box when I first took the lid off.  Took out the used mite-away quick strips.  I removed the drone frame that had been in the upper brood box and placed an empty one in the bottom box.  There weren't a lot of capped drone cells, and they were even hatching as I watched.  Later I examined some pupa.  They were well past the purple eye stage; I saw only one mite.  The tray is now in the freezer. 
Hive 2. Spotted the queen.  There were larvae of different ages but no capped brood.  Since it takes 9 days from laying to capping, this makes sense.  This is the colony that had to make a new queen and had no eggs or larvae on May 1.  I inspected on the 15th which means that she had started laying a few days after I looked on the 1st.  I removed the spent mite-away quick strips.  The drone frame, in the upper box, had capped honey and honey-in-process.  I removed it and later scraped off the honeycomb.  Placed an empty drone frame in the bottom box.

Honeycomb for Seth

Hive 3.  Spotted the queen.  There were 4 frames of brood in the bottom box.  There was some comb being drawn in the middle frames of the top box and the side frames of the bottom box.  I scraped off some honey-filled brace comb that was between the two boxes.  This hive, started from the split I made, seems to be doing ok.  It's not very strong yet, but with all that brood I anticipate rapid growth.
Olea's hive.  I've decided not to go into the hive.  Through the window one can see that they're doing well.  They have built comb to about 6 inches from the back board and all the comb is covered with bees.
This is the honey flow.  Lots of flowers for the girls to visit.

This is the flower on the hedge behind the blackberries.  The bees really like them.  I saw a lot of it growing in Berkeley when we visited yesterday.  Do you know what it is?