Our first round of caging yielded 81% out of 560 nucs. We caged on the 20th day for fear that the take might not have been as good and we felt there would be a need to re-queen sooner rather than later with the next round of cells to avoid laying workers. You can only imagine how pleased we were to find most of the nucs full of bees raising 2 full frames of brood, much of it being capped. Some of the 20% no-takes were actually queens that were present but only had eggs. We decided to air on the side of caution and pinch their heads, the same we do with unmated virgins. The other big news was the very high number of drones now present in those nucs, as well as our support hives throughout the area.
We are still having issues and probably will for at least another week with yellow jessamine. It seems to be wreaking havoc in our cell yard also. The last group of cells we brought in for this Saturday hatch was the poorest we’ve seen this season; consequently we had to cull 50%. We’re guessing the poison nectar that is affecting baby bees adversely is also affecting the nurse bees and possibly queen larva. We saw the same problem last year during the jessamine bloom, it cleared up and we had no cell issues as soon as the blossoms had fallen. I really hate yellow jessamine.