Hive Updates

North hive:

Booming. They filled up the first eight frames with brood in 2 weeks. Added a second box May 9. Going today for an inspection - will likely add another box today.

South Hives:

Inspected the package hive on May 3 to find no queen, some very limited brood and what looked like queen cells:

I posted this on G+ and some helpful Frenchman remarked that he thought they looked like "false" queen cells, and we in fact drone cells. I decided to leave them alone and see if they make a queen. There were still lots of bees in the hive.

Yesterday (May 16) I inspected this hive again and found that those cells had been torn down. I could not find a queen and did not see eggs or larvae. It's possible there's a queen in there who has not started laying yet, but I decided to add two frames of mixed brood to this hive anyway to prop up the numbers and give them some eggs/young larvae to work with if they want to make a new queen.

The Survivor hive is coming along nicely. It has about 10 full frames of brood as of yesterday, which is 7 full frames more than it had on May 2. Third box has 7/10 frames full of brood but I don't know if there are bees in the bottom box at all. Next time I inspect I'll likely add another box and let the honey production begin!

Plans for today are to inspect the North hive again and assess the possibility of doing a split from it. Queen cells will be available June 1 from the club's queen rearing project. 

North Hive Inspection

As usual the North hive is doing awesome. The upper (fourth) box of 8-frame mediums was completely packed with honey. I didn't see a single egg or larva, though I didn't take all the frames out. This hive is clearly doing great. Four mediums is what I hoped to over winter in, so I put on a queen excluder and another box. I need to find out if I can take a few frames of honey off and extract to have something for Christmas presents, and if they should get enough for winter out of the fall flow.

Things are booming up North

4pm, 64 degrees, cloudy

I stopped at Essie's this afternoon to inspect the North hive. I was supposed to bring a friend from work, but the weather was cloudy and threatening rain, and I wanted her first experience around the bees to be positive, so I decided to check them on my own this time and bring her along next time.

The hive is doing great. Two weeks ago, on May 9th, I added the second 8-frame box. Today I had to add the third. The second box was set up as follows:

Frame 1: Undrawn
Frame 2: Half drawn, nectar
Frame 3: Full of nectar
Frame 4: Solid brood, mixture of capped and uncapped
Frame 5: Solid capped brood
Frame 6: Solid capped brood
Frame 7: Solid brood, mostly uncapped
Frame 8: Some brood, mostly nectar

As things looked pretty healthy in this box, I did not check the box below.

The bees were not very excited to see me. It was cloudy and breezy and cooler than it's been lately. At first they were fine - a little bit of smoke in the front and some under the lid, and they were peeking at me from the edges of the frames. About the time I got to Frame 7, they started flying more, bonking my veil and flying at my hands. I took a quick look at Frame 8, added the third box and got out of there.

Hive Inspection at North

10:30am, 60 degrees, Sunny

I took an early lunch and went up to Essie's to inspect the hive at her place. It's doing awesome! All but one of the eight frames is fully drawn. They have not touched the last frame on the North side of the hive. There is capped brood on frames 2, 3, 4 and 5. Frame 6 has mostly uncapped nectar and a little uncapped brood. Frame 7 is all nectar, some of it capped. I emailed the SCBA list to find out if that means I should stop feeding now.

Since all but one of the frames was drawn, I added a super full of frames with the Rite Cell foundation that came yesterday. So far this hive is well ahead of the package hive at my house.

First inspection of North hive

On Wednesday I inspected the North hive at Essie's house. The weather was in the mid 60s and sunny. This was the first inspection of that hive since it was installed a week earlier, on April 18th. Overall this hive has been drinking more syrup than the South hive - about a half gallon in a week. That's still not much compared to what some other people's hives are drinking.

On with the inspection...

Here's the hive as it stands at the edge of the woods. Essie added a brick to the top the other day when it was windy and apparently the top cover blew off!

Here's the view under the inner cover. It doesn't look like a lot is going on but...

It's pretty busy in there! The been let their queen out and are building comb. Unfortunately, they are not building it on the foundation, which is Duragilt and is apparently trash. Instead, they are building comb down from the top bars and sort of attaching it to the foundation in places. This is bound to become a mess, so I may end up ripping out foundation on the remaining undrawn frames and either putting in beeswax foundation or leaving it completely out. I'm going to order some wax foundation and go from there.

Overall, frames 3 and 4 are drawn and they have started on frames 5 and 6 a little.

Here's a look at one of the blobs of comb they have built over the foundation. They know what they are doing; there are fresh eggs in the cells.

The queen cage is all empied out. I removed it from the frame and took off the rubber band.

Stopped at Essie's at lunch again. Syrup is down another pint and there's more activity at the swarm trap. The bees are very orange colored like the ones in our hives, so it might not be swarm scouting behavior, rather, it could just bee new local bees checking it out.

Lunchtime bee check!

Cloudy and 62 degrees.

I stopped over to Essie's at lunch today and checked the bees. The sugar syrup on the hive installed yesterday is down about one pint. Tomorrow I will bring a half gallon jar in to have her swap out over the weekend once they get low on syrup. The bees were flying strong.

The swarm trap I put on one of her trees had scout activity. I counted about 10 bees that entered the box in five minutes. It would be really awesome if the bee tree in the back swarmed to this box. I couldn't really tell where the bees were coming from.

A couple cell phone pictures: