A pleasant surprise

[slaphead]

Completed our first full inspections of the three packages hived on April 15 today.  Opening hive #2 first we found the middle frames had been spread apart and then the bees had filled the frame width gap with a full comb.  My initial reaction was Aaaah!  Clearly someone had poked around in the hive and not pushed the frames back together again.  After a bit of thought I decided to remove one of the outer frames and then gradually seperated the frames from each other working across the box and through the mess in the middle.  To my surprise the free form comb remained bound to the top of the frame on one side and lifted clear of the box with it.  Taking this as a sign we might get away with this "disaster" after all I decided to leave it as is, replaced it back in the box and continued the inspection.  The hive has 5 frames completely drawn out, plus 1 free form comb and two half frames of comb.  Found her majesty walking across one comb, plenty of eggs and a lot of brood.  Despite the overcast skies and occasional shower they remained as gentle as could be.  We dusted them with powdered sugar and put them back to bed.  Hive #3 came next and was a bit of a shocker,  all 10 frames were completely drawn out and the box was FULL of bees.  I mean bursting at the seams.  Each frame was carefully removed to check for brood pattern, swarm cells (yes I was panicing) and the queen.  We didn't find the queen or any swarm cells (thank goodness for the latter) but there were "fields" of capped cells, including a few drone cells, and uncapped cells with larvae at several stages.  At this point the shower turned into a light rain and we quickly dusted the frames with p-sugar before adding a second box (8 deep frames bracketed by a pair of medium frames for varroa traps).  By this point the bees were a little testy and one nailed me on the knuckle of my middle finger.  A puff of smoke across the knuckle deterred further harrassment of that digit and taking the hint we quickly sealed up the hive.  Hive #1 was opened last and found to contain 8 completely drawn out frames, 2 half frames and a nice brood pattern with occasional holes in the fields of capped brood.  It had lots of bees and was judged ready for a second deep as per hive #3.  I didn't spend time looking for the queen in this one as it was still lightly raining and I was concerned we might chill the brood.  All in all a very gratifying day in the apiary.  I don't know if it's normal for a package to fill a deep in two and a half weeks but this is much, much faster than I experienced last year.  Admittedly the spring of 2008 was dismissal and perhaps this years warmer spring accounts for the difference.  Whatever the reason I'm very happy with the progress made by these three hives and are looking forward to beezy summer  8-)

SH

[RayMarler]

Sounds like you're off to a great start this year! As for the difference in performance from last year... Different weather and nectar flows can count, but I would wager the biggest difference is the different bees. This year you've got what I call gangbuster bees, which are always a pleasure to have. :)