I inspected my bees this evening with the help of Gustavo, a Brazilian exchange student working at the HRC. He lives in a cabin just a few hundred meters from my hives. He told me that he worked at an apiary in Brazil for several months, and has some experience with bees. He was very relaxed around the bees, which comes as little surprise, since he told me that they work with Africanized honey bees in Brazil.
We worked the first hive, A hive, first. I worked with no veil, since the hive is still small and very relaxed. I was very happy to see lots of eggs and larvae in the hive, a sure sign that the new queen has been accepted and is doing her job well. Although I did not see her on this inspection, I was more than happy with what I saw, and closed up the hive. I hope that in a week or so they will be ready for the third hive body, which should give them enough time to draw out all of the foundation before winter.
One of the great pleasures of working without a veil is being able to take a sample of the honey straight from the hive.
Hive B was much more work, and I made sure my veil was in place for opening up this hive. First, we checked on the progress in the honey supers I recently added. The top honey super is almost ready to harvest, as only the very bottoms of the frames are not capped. They honey in these frames is a wonderful light color, most likely from the clover bloom, which is just now fading. I will wait one week and then harvest my very first full super of comb honey.
The second super is coming along very well, and I suspect that I will have enough time for the bees to fill up a third before the close of the summer.
Next, I performed another full reversal of the hive. What a right pain in the ass that was. I was only stung three times, and had to walk away from the hives only twice. I am guessing that the bees were much less happy this time owing to the extra honey they had stored in the hive. Gustavo, of course, was not stung at all.
I inspected today to see how the honey supers on hive B were doing, and to check for the new queen in hive A. The good news is, the new queen is alive and well in the hive. The bad news is, she does not seem to be performing her queenly duties very well. There was only a small amount of new brood in the hive, and I did not see any eggs. However, the light was not good for checking for eggs, so there may have been some. I will have to perform my next inspection when the light is more favorable for egg spotting.
In this next photo, you can clearly see the queen (number 12), on the comb. Also visible is the small patch of larvae from the new queen. Ideally, this frame should be packed solid with eggs and larvae. I don't know what exactly is happening, perhaps she starts slowly as she gets acclimated to the new hive. I only hope she has been accepted by the hive to the degree that my inspection did not disrupt a fragile situation.
Hive B is doing very well, drawing out the foundation in the second honey super I provided them. No capped honey in the first super yet, but it should be soon, I hope. There are a lot of bees in this hive. They are spilling out the front of the hive, piled all over the entrances. Here is a picture of the hives, showing the difference between a strong, three-deep hive and a weak two-deep hive:
I don't think they are preparing to swarm. Swarming season is behind us, I hope. And I really don't know what steps I could take at this point to discourage swarming. I performed a reversal recently, although I may go in on Monday or Tuesday and perform a second reversal, just to keep them guessing.
I removed one frame full of capped brood from B hive and introduced it into A hive. I swapped it with a frame of bare foundation from A hive. B hive should draw out the foundation on the frame in short order, and I hope that the introduction of the brood frame will help the new queen in A hive.
There were a lot of bees at the main entrance of A hive in defensive posture.
Also, I can feel the entire hive vibrating when I place my hands on the hive bodies of B hive.
We went to the hives this morning. I wanted to add a second honey super to the strong hive, to give them some room. The hive is full with bees, and the extra honey super will give them some room to spread out and make more honey. Swarming season is behind us, but there is no need to give the bees an excuse to swarm by crowding them.
Here is a picture of the inner cover, after removing the outer cover:
Of course, we had to take a peek and see how the bees were doing with the honey super we had put in last week. They were doing very well, drawing out most of the foundation and already filling the cells with nectar to make into honey. Here is a pic of the honey super:
I drew several of the frames out to inspect them. In this one, you can see the nectar, which is already starting to take a nice, rich honey color:
As long as I was there, I performed a brief inspection of the top hive body. I only inspected a couple or three frames to check for brood, which was present in abundance. While removing one of the frames, I damaged a drone cell, exposing the pupa within. You can see clearly the pupa in this photo, at the top of the frame. The pupa's eyes are dark, indicating that he was within a few short days of emerging from the cell as a full grown drone:
All of these pictures were taken by vinfille.
We have a guest in the parsley in the front garden. I am not sure what it is, but it is pretty nonetheless:
The bed of Bergamot in the front is in full bloom, much to my own delight and that of the hummingbirds. Mt favorite flowers are these uncommon double flowers:
I was digging a hole in the back yard in order to amend the soil and plant some blueberry bushes. For some reason, my dogs decided that it was the perfect spot to get a suntan. It made me laugh, since it looks like I was digging a hole in which to bury the dogs:
Returned the evening of the 6th, to check for acceptance of the new queen in A hive. vinfille and I noticed bees inserting their proboscises into the cage, but no more biting of the cage. So, we decided to let the queen out onto a frame of comb with a few bees to see what would happen. I removed a frame of comb with no bees and placed it next to the hive body and released the queen onto the face of the comb. I reached up and grabbed one or two bees at a time from the hive and introduced them onto the comb with the queen bee. All of them walked over to the queen and started grooming and cleaning her. After a few minutes, we replaced the frame back into the hive. Still, the bees seemed happy with her, and many bees walked over to attend to the queen. Finally, we wished her luck and put the cover back on.
It would seem, then, that the queen has been accepted by the hive. Of course, we will not know for another week. Next Wednesday, we will check for the presence of eggs, a sure indication that the queen has been accepted.
We checked B hive and the foundation in the honey super is still in place. The bees have already started drawing it out so they can fill it up with honey for me.
Went back on the morning of the 5th to put the honey super back on top of the strong hive.
I returned to the hives on the 4th, as I had forgotten to bring the queen excluder with me on the previous day. The queen excluder is a wire mesh frame that goes between the hive bodies and the honey supers. The mesh is large enough to allow the worker bees to get into the honey supers, but small enough to not allow the queen to pass. Thus, we don't get any eggs in the honey that we are planning to eat.
Unfortunately, when I opened the top cover, I discovered that the foundation in the frames in the honey super had all fallen out. I had not done a very good job of installing the wax foundation into the frames. A frustrating and unneccesary setback, chalked up to inexperience. I removed the super and all the frames, and re-installed new wax foundation, hopefully the right way this time.
First, I performed inspection to determine queen acceptance in A hive. We noted two distinct behaviors: some bees were inserting their proboscises into the wire mesh, and others were biting the cage. The biting behavior is bad, and indicates that the bees have not yet accepted the new queen. The bees extending their proboscises is probably a good sign, since it may mean that they are attempting to groom or feed the queen. We decided to play it safe, and leave the queen bee in her cage for a few more days.
Here is a pic of the queen cage in the hive:
On the other hive, we performed a full reversal and added a honey super on top. For a full reversal, we re-position the hive bodies so that what was the bottom hive bottom is now on top, and the top hive body is on the bottom. This is a bit of work, since those hive bodies are heavy, and three hive bodies full of bees is a lot of beeeeeees! Here is a picture of me replacing the top hive bottom into its new position on the bottom of the stack:
