Josh would like to get some eggs off the gal we call the "Dragon Queen". She lived up to her name with Josh getting stung several time. It seems his bee suit isn't bee proof! We found 4 queen cells and 8 frames of brood in her hive. We moved all the queen cells and half the brood over to a spare hive I had out in worries over a swarm. It seems I was right to worry as there are larvae in at least 3 of the queen cells.
We also checked the two hives over in the SE corner. The one had just had a large die off just days before I moved it. Like 90% of the bees. The second hive is very strong and we looked at shuffling some brood over to the weak hive. When Josh lifted the inner liner the neat heart shaped wax comb came with it. In the week since I moved these hives the girls decided to fill the 10th frame space with the comb. No honey yet but so very delicate and cool.
As we moved brood frames (this gal is strong as well!) to the weak hive we discovered there was fresh brood capped in the weak hive. Worried we had a worker bee laying we nearly discarded the frames until we saw the queen! She had survived what ever had killed all the others and was building the population back up.
Now we have 4 good hives and one we are waiting for a queen to hatch (the NZ ladies are working hard. There are frames of pollen jammed in the hives everywhere and life is good!