9th Inspection

Took a peek under the hood today specifically to see how much honey the gals are making for ME, and to look at the upper deep hive body. Three frames are full of capped honey and comb is being drawn on several others. The top super was full of bees but no drawn comb. The upper hive body contained several frames of capped brood and visible larvae. The other combs were full of capped honey. They're HEAVY and I dropped one into the super. Yikes! No harm done and the bees were remarkably docile today.

8th Inspection

On August 8th I pulled the apistan strips and removed lots of burr comb between the two deep hive bodies. On August 16th I sucked it up and pried apart and inspected the frames in the lower hive body. I couldn't tell, with my bad eyes, if there were eggs in the empty cells but there was larvae and capped brood in several frames as well as lots of pollen. I finished removing the burr comb and tidied up things in general. The girls are still busy drawing comb in the first shallow super with about half the frames drawn so I added a second shallow super. Man, are there a lot of bees at home during the day. They come boiling up out of the frames so I had to smoke them back down and used the bee brush to get them off so I could replace the supers without crushing them.

Quick Peek

I couldn't resist taking a peek at the top super to see how things were coming along, but although the frames were full of bees, no comb has been drawn yet. The ladies had glued down the queen excluder but good, too. I wanted to get rid of some brace comb in the top hive body so I pulled the first frame. There was a beautiful big arc of capped honey surrounding the developing larvae and brood cells.

Bee Cloud

On warm, calm, sunny days by late afternoon there is a cloud of bee activity in front of the hive. Click on the play button to enter the bee cloud.

7th Inspection

Today I found the upper deep fully drawn into comb and the empty cells filled with eggs so I guess the queen is OK although I haven't seen her in five weeks. Several frames also contained capped brood. The lower deep contains frames of capped brood as well as numerous empty cells where pupae have hatched. I couldn't tell if there were eggs or not in them as I couldn't get the sun over my shoulder--too shaded when I inspected. I really need to wear bifocals when I check out the frames, too. The medium super was full of bees but they haven't started drawing comb yet. All in all, things are good except one of the gals stung me in the left thumb.

6th Inspection

Took another look-see today and the ladies are doing wonderfully well. The top deep is nearly fully drawn into comb--8 of the 10 frames--and newly laid eggs, larvae and capped brood are evident. Everything looks good in the lower hive body as well. Numerous capped cells and visible larvae are present. I added the queen excluder and a honey super today even though I can't use the honey since I need wait until August 9th to pull the Apistan strips. The girls can use it for winter stores, though.

5th Inspection

Today's peek was to see if anything was happening in the upper hive body. Since last week four frames have been drawn into comb in the upper body and most of the empty cells were filled with eggs. I needed to remove some burr comb from the top of the frames and from between two frames. Apparently, I didn't have the frames pushed tightly together so there was too much space between them. I needed to really jam my hive tool between the upper and lower hive bodies and pry around the edges to get the two unstuck. I lifted the upper body off and the bees came boiling out of the lower body. Some swarmed over the sides and others flew in a bee cloud around me. I smoked them back into submission and examined the frames. The center frames contain empty cells where pupae have hatched. The others contain larvae and capped brood in a nice tight oval pattern. There was also quite a bit of burr comb on the top bars that I removed. The bees seemed agitated today so I didn't bother to take photos, and for the first time since hiving the bees in early June I was stung. One flew up my pants leg and nailed me on the inner thigh. Ouch. Bet that will happen again.