Although it seems longer, it’s been about two weeks since I shipped the Japanese honey bees back from Mie Prefecture. Of the 3 hive boxes I shipped back, the bees in two of them are doing well. They have good entrance activity with good numbers of foraging bees coming and going and guard bees guarding the hive entrances. A few days ago I opened the 3rd hive which had no activity and found a very few newly emerged adult bees with no storage and a wax moth infestation, so I cleaned up and emptied that hive box, removing the damaged comb and killing the wax moth larvae.
I removed the hive covers today from the two active hives and it appears that the population of bees in both hives has increased substantially. That is probably due to many bees which were developing in the comb having now emerged as adults. I have not yet taken out any frames to observe to see if there is an active queen laying yet in either one of the hives. I plan to wait a couple of more weeks before doing that check, but the current situation appears to be promising and I feel fairly confident that I will successfully get two new colonies from this activity.
The population of bees in the original traditional log beehive is very low now compared to what it was previously. Hopefully they will build back up. The bees in the top bar hive (made from a wooden planter) are going like gangbusters and have filled the entire hive with comb, brood and stores. I saw drones not so long ago and the workers are bringing in quite a bit of pollen right now. The bees in the colony are also buzzing and humming and making quite a loud audible noise. The bee population in the top bar hive is now the highest of the four hives.