April 18 Hive Check

I checked on the hives today to release the queen into the hive. I am totally unsure if I did this right, but I went ahead. I will be honest...I was so nervous checking on the bees! Part of it is wanting them to be alright, part of it is me wanting to do things right. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but I'm still running on a bit of adrenaline.

Source Hive
At the Source hive, which is my top-bar in my backyard, the bees were in slight shade at noon and coming and going from the entrance. I gently smoked the entrance, took off the cover, and started moving bars down so that I could get to the entrance bars. They are already starting to make beautiful looking comb! It was quite a sight with them all festooning and working away.

I got to the queen's cage, but they had started building comb AROUND it. Plus, bees were swarming all over her and it was hard to carry once I DID release her. I swept some bees off, though that seemed to make them all mad and the hive got agitated. I was working fast and tried to get the cork out. Unfortunately, it fell in. Not wanting to risk having the queen immediately fly out, I placed the cage on the bottom of the hive. I wanted to put a marshmallow in its place, as recommended, but it wouldn't fit immediately and I decided I didn't want something bad to happen. It was adrenaline talking, I'm sure.

Anyway, it has been five days in the hive with her, and they seemed pretty content the last few days of me watching the hive, so I am hoping that they don't kill her. I sealed up the hive so that they could have their space to continue what they do and I will go back out in a a few days, maybe a week, to check on how things are going and look for the queen.

SR Hive
Tristan wanted to join me this time to work on the Langstroth Hive at Sunflower River. We gathered everything and headed out to the hive. They seemed content to do their own thing, so we got the smoker going and went to look for the queen cage. She was still well, the cage covered in bees. The hive was busy laying down comb and it was beautiful.

This time, I was able to get the cork out of the queen cage and Tristan had a marshmallow ready and stuffed it into the hole. We replaced the frame and the queen cage, and then closed everything up. We refilled the feeder with sugar water and moved the hive slightly, as the box was too far back and the bees were using it as an additional entrance.

Tristan and I discussed making a new cover for the hive, as this one fell apart as we were putting it back on. And we also need to shave the entrance reducer down so that it can be used with this hive.

Everything looked good, and I will come back in a week to see how they're doing, look for the queen (or evidence of her) and remove the queen cage.