Hive Checks May 2 & 3

May 2: Source Hive Check
A little after 3pm, I went out to check on my top-bar hive. It was a mild but sunny day, and the hive was in the shade. It was warm out and pleasant.

My goals today was to replace their feeder with more food, to take care of the comb they were using on the bottom board, and to look for the queen (just generally taking a look at how they're doing).

Replacing the can of syrup was the easy part. I then started going through the combs until I could get my tool into the hive to remove the comb on the bottom. As suggested by one of the instructors in my certificate program, I should just put the comb in the back of the hive and let them take everything out of it before I remove it. Scraping it up was also easy and I placed it back there without trouble, finding pollen and nectar inside. Unfortunately, some of the nectar splattered on the bottom board as I moved it, but I saw bees cleaning that up.

As far as the queen, I couldn't find her with a visual inspection. The bees were busy, having made about 9 bars of comb, with one completely empty and one of them only about half completed. I saw more drone brood than I thought I should, and some capped worker brood, so I think that they must have a queen, but the amounts of worker brood was smaller than I would have liked.

The pollen, though, is beautiful, with tons of color. They have quite a bit of nectar, too.

As I was closing everything up, I realized I need to build a better lid. The one I have simply is too tight to adequately get it on the hive without making a bunch of racket, which the bees don't like. I'll be setting up a day to make hives soon, so I'll make a new one then.

May 3: SR Hive Check

Kat Heatherington thinks these are "action
shots." I think she needs to understand what
"action" means.

Kat and I wandered back to the hive at about 7pm. It was a nice, warm day that was going to quickly become night, so I wanted to work fast. They had lots of sun this late, the shade being more of an afternoon thing, I'm finding.

Kat Heatherington likes
their cute faces. She thinks
they look like cats. I'm sure
they're offended by that.

My goals for opening the hive was to just see how they were doing, look for the queen, and see what they need. Kat's goals was to get a decent picture of a honeybee, which she obviously did.

I opened the hive and found that they were going gangbusters! All but two of the frames was mostly built with comb (so there were 8 frames). Where the old queen cage still was, they had done some cross-combing, but it was very little and easy to remove. The very first frame I pulled out, I came face to face with a very lovely queen, so I put her back in. Seeing lots of brood, and very little drone brood, I decided it was time to add another brood box.

I sent Kat scurrying away for more frames while I looked over the rest of the hive. No problems, and everyone seems happy. All the brood looked good, and I could see them in all phases of growth...it was really cool to see that in my own hive! There was lots of pollen, a good amount of nectar, and I couldn't find evidence of disease.

Once Kat was back, we added another brood box on top, putting a couple bars with some brood in it and filling out the rest of the space with more frames...

...And found out the box doesn't really fit. So add another thing to the list of things I need to make. I will definitely be making more boxes soon.