Hi Everyone,
Well a quick check of the hive yesterday showed my top box to be pretty full of drawn comb. Following the 70% rule I decided to put on a queen excluder and my third box.
I've stopped feeding the bees as the weather has been great so I think they're doing fine on their own. If I don't see much activity in the third box I may put some feed in the top feeder as a way to draw the bees up into the third box.
I also did a quick check of my brood box, and things there are looking pretty good. My frames have larvae again, and I saw no sign of queen cells. My wife was able to get a great shot of one of the brood frames where you can see the white larvae really clearly:
So far so good. Since the weather is getting warmer I have put out a couple of bee watering sources. One is a bucket filled with water and styrofoam peanuts (the idea being that the bees can land on the peanuts and drink the water), the other is a board that I have under a dripping outdoor spigot. So far I haven't seen bees drinking but I'm hoping to see that happening soon.
I'll probably check the hive again in a couple of weeks to see how the top box is doing. Maybe I'll actually get to harvest honey in the next month or so.
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