Big day with the 'girls' today.

[Spear]

Today I started real early, I was up at 7am - normally don't get out of bed till 8 or 9 am on a saturday - and out to my small bee yard - only has 2 hives - by 8:30. Was still to cold for the girls to be out much, the one hive had a few dead drones on the landing board - well 4 to be exact - on closer inspection I saw that they had been pulled from their cells before emerging and they had cripple wings. I'm hoping that is not a sign that my girls are in trouble and it is just that they are very hygienic and the virus is not a threat to the whole colony. The 2nd hive had a few bees clustered on the one side of the entrance but they moved back in after a short while.
When taking the dead drones from the landing board I was impressed by the heat radiating from the entrance. I let my son put his hand in front of the entrance and he said we should bring the bees home to heat or apartment - lol.
Not wanting to disturb them too much I quickly popped the tops and just checked the progress in the honey supers that I put on about 2 weeks ago. The hive that was weakest going into winter - also the one with the drones on the landing board - has far out done the 'stronger' hive and almost filled 4 frames (out of 10) with nectar and almost ready to cap it all!
Then it was off to my mothers house where I keep the other 9 hives.
The 1st hive I inspected is doing well with collecting nectar and pollen but I think it is queenless or the queen is failing - saw very little capped brood and nothing else except for the nice polished cells waiting to be layed in.
The next few hives are doing very well and have great queens - I have no idea how old any of my queens are! In the 4th hive I 'struck gold' and spotted the queen on the 4th frame! So for fun and to practice I caught her and marked her with a pretty pink dot :) - Now even my mother will be able to spot her with ease!
I am converting from 10 frame zander hives to 12 frame dadant - Zander is like all mediums whereas dadant is like a deep brood box and shallow supers - I transferred the old frames into the new boxes and gave 2 dadant frames. Naturally the girls are building on the bottom of the shorter frames, the problem is that it is mostly drone comb! And the queens are happily laying drones in this. So I have been cutting the drone brood off - it has also been breaking off when I pull the frames because they have built across some frames. This all takes time so by about 4pm I'm forced to call it a day and go eat something promising the last 3 hive that I will look into them tomorrow...
Oh and the best thing is that I only got 2 stings and both were because I was careless and squished the stinger when grabbing the drone comb that I was cutting off without 1st looking where I put my fat fingers!

[HomeSteadDreamer]

sounds like a good day in the yard.  My bees are bringing in nectar but no capping yet.  We are supposed to be in the flow I thought our overwintered hives would be laying in more nectar then I'm seeing.

[johng]

The crippled wings you describe sounds like Deformed Wing Virus. It is normally related to a high mite load, you need to do a mite count to see how high the mite load is. That will let you know if you have a problem or not.