I had a great experience inspecting my three TVBA nucs today. Veiled up but no gloves (first time ever!). Gosh, that makes the work so much easier!

I saw all three queens (another first!), but no eggs. Lots of small, light colored fuzzy youngsters and brood capping galore in all but one bottom board (a few but much less in that one) They are filling the brood cells with syrup. 20% or less are bringing in pollen, so they are hitting the patties pretty hard. But still no eggs or larvae.

I have the boxes configured like this (not confident it is correct):

Bottom board

brood box

Queen excluder

Inner cover

feeder and floats

top cover

Is config this correct? I welcome input from my wonderful distanced mentors.

The girls are apparently busy repairing some of the drawn comb I provided and are not yet building on empty frames.

One of the feeders has a thin film of something on the surface of the syrup. few bees on it. I think mold, so tomorrow I will dump it, sanitize the feeder and floats with 2% bleach solution, rinse and air dry. sound right?

We are starting to see flower buds in the pollinator meadow. In a few days it will be a 2.5 acre riot of nectar that will last well into September.

Many thanks to all of the volunteers who make the nuc pick up work so well. More so under these trying COVID times. Cheers