All change

I now have a third hive! This was ordered earlier in the year from a local commercial keeper. I was a bit concerned about getting a nucleus quite late in the season and so I asked my mentor about this. He suggested swapping it's position with one of my other hives. This would mean that the flying bees would return to the nucleus hive and so boost their numbers. This sounded like a good idea so I did it. However, the following week I did an inspection and found no queen! Aghh! The flying bees had killed her! Oh well, I won't make that mistake again. So, the hive went back to the supplier for him to introduce a new queen ( more money!). This worked well and the hive is now building up numbers well in  preparation for winter.