Is it just me or does it look like Cam is trying to do a pirouette?
Bee Somebody
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Oops – the roof blew off hive #2
We visited the hives today and much to our surprise the roof had blown off hive #2. This was our own fault since we hadn’t added a brick on top.
We Found the Queen(s)! Meet Queen Pippa II & B.B. Queen
Queen Pippa II is right there in the middle, upper third, with the long torso and slightly darker body.
And introducing B.B. Queen! You can’t miss her right in the middle of the picture. Special thanks to Michelle Allison for winning the naming contest – Michelle a book is in the mail for you!
We’re happy to report that the inspection went well and both queens seem to be doing well, with healthy egg-laying patterns. We’re continuing to give them sugar water in the top feeders to keep them going…
Where’s the Queen?
Cam hard at work looking for the queen.
and just so you know, this is not a lot of bees. This same frame will likely support 4x as many bees in peak of summer.
Is that a bee in your suit? Or are you just happy to see me?
Welcome back Mr. Combover!
After a long absence from the hive and the bees, Mr. Combover was welcomed back with an uncomfortable surprise – a bee on the inside of his suit. It was actually going crazy, buzzing loudly, but it wasn’t until the bee flew directly into Mr. Combover’s line of sight that Mr. Combover realized he had a bee INSIDE his suit! Spoiler Alert! If you are a bee-lover please turn away now – Mr. Combover decided his safest recourse was to kill the bee immediately – which he did by crushing it in the face mesh. Gross.
Bees in Hive #2 Have a Mind of Their Own? !
Mr. Combover made a solo visit to the hive today to re-stock the top-feeders with some sugar water. Beekeepers often provide bees with some additional fuel to help the bees get a jumpstart on the early parts of the season before flowers are in full-full bloom. Everything looked standard in Hive #1, but Hive #2 has gone rogue after only 1 week?!
The picture above is the ceiling to the top feeder. A slim piece of plywood, it is the ceiling of the interior hive, providing a seperation vs. the roof which is a separate piece with metal for environmental protection. What’s out of place in this picture is that the bees have decided to start building honeycomb in the top-feeder – not a good thing. There are several reasons this isn’t a good thing. First, the top feeder will be removed in a few weeks as the hive gets up and running, so any work they put in will not be put to good use in the long run. Second, it is important that the bees build their comb on the standard frames so that we can inspect and harvest in the appropriate ways.
But before we start worrying that we have problem children on our hands we should stop and self-reflect that – as usual – nature doesn’t mess up – beekeepers do! In this case, due to a complicated overlapping travel schedule Cam and Mr. Combover were not able to re-stock the top-feeder with sugar water in a timely manner. As a result, the top feeder became an empty dry space – indicating to the bees that they would need to eventually colonize and build comb to fill this space. The bees were following the rules – the beekeepers weren’t. Oops.
In the end, Mr. Combover used one of the metal tools to scrape the comb off the ceiling and removed the excess comb. He then gently brushed the bees back into the bottom super to encourage them to focus on the immediate task of buidling comb in the bottom super box.
As an aside, one other reason that the bees might have started building comb in the top-feeder could have been that they had finished work in the bottom super and were starting to get overcrowded and needed more space, but upon close inspection, several of the exterior frames had yet to be built with comb, suggesting they were not out of space in the bottom super.
The Installation – Bees on the Loose!
A close-up pic of the bees as they get acclimated to their new hive. Many people ask, and the answer is yes, the bees are free to come and go as they want. Short of blocking the entrance (which we do on occasion for specific reasons) the bees fly in and out of their own accord. Likely their first step upon installation is to send out a few bees to find a local water source and some initial ideas about where some good flowers are.
Photo credit: Gillian Bostock (http://www.gillianbostock.com)
