Just a quick update, bees are doing very well, all my two box hives are needing another box each so I'm working on frames (already have the boxs ready). Number One still has chalk brood problems, I'm going to try an odd remedy Anita told me about, it seems to already be working on the other hive I have with chalk brood problems. You peel a banana and place the peel under the lid inside the hive on top of the frames, then you eat the banana, very strange but it does indeed seem to work. Number one will be a good test since they have had trouble ever since I put them in this hive, I remember giving them an old comb, I think this was the vector. Comb is best kept to a hive and not traded around unless the mother hive is free of problems.

Not much to talk about went on in June, here are a few notes from my "journal"

On the June 16th I checked all my new hives for progress and queen rightness, everything is going well, all the new hives are healthy and working / laying. I also started to weight my larger hives.

On the June 19th I killed number ones queen on purpose, mostly as a natural form of selection, they had whats called chalkbrood, this can be and is controllable with genetics, only number one and maybe one of the bait hive catches has a problem with this disease.

On July 2nd I moved the bottom box on number 5 (was empty) to just under the top box. This is to see if the bees will put up more honey if they have empty space above themselves, up to this point my largest hives hadn't put on any weight at all so I was getting worried. I left some the way they were for a contrast in production.

On July 7th all my hives started putting on weight, even the small ones. I added a box to Number 2 (nuc I made from #5) they had filled their whole box, my baby is growing up!

On July 11th, Today I checked number one for a queen, I was going to just add a frame of brood from a healthy hive (just in case they were not able to produce a queen) but when I saw that little virgin queen crawling around I closed everything back up to let them do their thing. Now I watch for pollen to start going into this hive, nature rocks! All hives continue to put on weight, I'm assuming this is a seasonal thing since last year this same thing happened, they don't seem to do much producing in the spring up to the end of june, then the summer is about production.