Bee update with good queen photo

Yesterday I inspected our three beehives with the usual mixed results, but I did manage to get some good photographs of a queen bee.  
A birds eye view graphic of the apiary.
First, before I give the current hive update I'm going to take a moment to assign a reference number to each hive in the apiary and recount the history of each hive.  As is apparent in the above graphic we started out with four hive in the beginning of the year.  The entrances of two of those hives, Hives 1 and 2, faced south, while the entrances of Hives 3 and 4 faced east.  Shortly after installation Hive 1 had a sudden massive loss of worker bees possibly caused by some kind of contamination in the syrup I was feeding them.  From that low point the hive rapidly grew back and is now the strongest hive in the apiary.  Hive 2 grew very slowly compared to the other hives, contracted sacbrood virus, and eventually died out.  Hive 3 did well early on and brought in large quantities honey in the spring.  This hive built a lot of wax comb, but had trouble following the guides on each top bar, which led to crooked combs that had to be removed.  Hive 3 also likes to build a large number of queen cups on the edges of its wax combs.  Finally, Hive 4 has done consistently well throughout the year and not shown any unusual characteristics. 



Hive 4's robust queen.  This queen is unmarked meaning that the original queen that came with the hive this spring has been replaced.  Though the title of "queen" suggests she's in charge, the workers won't hesitate to raise new replacement queens if she fails in her duties. 
Hives 1 and 4 appear to be doing well with fair supplies of honey and plenty of young bees.  While inspecting Hive 4 I caught a glimpse of the queen and thought I'd take some photographs.  Hive 3 does not have a queen, but does still have a large population of worker bees.  No eggs or bee larva are present, so I transferred a brood comb filled with new bee eggs from Hive 4 to 3 in hopes that they will be able to raise a new queen.  Weather permitting, I'll check Hive 3 next week to see if there are any new emergency queen cells. 

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