Well it's been 11 days since a box of bees became a hive of bees and it was a little worrying as things took longer than the text books all say they should :-)
Basically here's the calendar:
- Monday: installed the bees
- Thursday: checked the hive and while there was no candy left the queen was still in the cage so I removed the wire and let her walk into the hive body.
- Saturday: checked again, comb is being drawn, sugar syrup is going fast and the queen is still active but no sign of eggs.
- Tuesday: quick check, much the same, plenty of foraging and some comb now has syrup and pollen stored. A little worried that the lack of eggs is a bad sign, but maybe we're just slow.
- Thursday: went down mainly to add a second hive body and top up the syrup - but who could resist checking, and there were plenty of eggs and even a few larvae!
