Sometimes, meaning to do good things, our unintended consequences can cause more trouble than good. I’ve included a picture of a queen that I painted with a blue dot several weeks ago when I came across her during hive manipulation. I dotted her to make it easier to find her when we came back to make nucs in several weeks, unfortunately, my marking pen malfunctioned and deposited a large amount of paint on the queens face completely covering one of her eyes and antenna as well as her left front foot. I felt awful that I had done this but thought so much of the queen, her brood pattern being so complete and the hive doing so well, that I just released her and hoped for the best. Who knows, maybe she would make it. Well, imagine my pleasure and surprise when I came across her today and I was able to make five 3-frame mating nucs from her hive. Not only was she doing well, she was thriving and so was her hive. The excessive blue paint made her very easy to find. I do not however, recommend this type of body painting of queens. Better to keep the dot confined to the top of her thorax. It was funny however to see, besides the queen, several worker bees also covered in blue paint from the mishap several weeks ago still working and carrying out their responsibilities.

     Nuc making has been going well. We are still slightly limiting the nuc groups to smaller numbers awaiting arrival of still more drones for this mating season. We are however seeing a very good number of drones now, and the queens are rapidly laying up the drone comb that we provide them. Willow pollen is now abundant in the hives and this is encouraging queens to expand their brood nest, better late than never. We’ve been keeping an eye on the orange grove and, right now, it looks like a March 1^stbloom. If we can get past the February full moon without a freeze, we can generally count on a good honey flow. Of course the greening has thrown the whole honey flow equation out of whack, but we remain optimistic.