Inspected my hives again after an 8 day family holiday down south. Both hives are strong. Plenty of honey in super too.
Prior to the break, I performed a split for a friend and upon inspection today appears I got overzealous creating a split with too many frames. The cold wet weather we’ve been having and the small number of nurse need meant the new split suffered chilled brood. I cycled 2 frames with new brood to boost the numbers along with nurse bees. The frames with dead/chilled brood got out in the healthy hive to cleanup and reuse.
Only managed to get picture of my ‘happy hive’ - plenty of drones.
I did notice a lot of play cups. Do Queens lay in these? Or do the nurse bees form a queen cell around eggs?
Looks like next inspection will be swarm prevention split time.
