So when we last left the bees, each hive had only 9 frames, and the queens were still stuck in the queen boxes. From the outside, things looked like they were progressing, with the dead bodies ejected, and the grass cleared out of the eastern hive’s entrance.
We needed to check to make sure that the queens had escaped their marshmallow prisons, and to put in a 10th frame.
This time, I decided to be the one donning the veil, so Kristi stood by with the instruction book, and in we went.
I checked the western hive first; this is the one where we had the sugar water incident during the install, so I was a bit worried what I’d find.
The bees have definitely eaten some of the sugar water, about 1/4 out of each of the bottles. I didn’t do a full inspection, but it appears that the comb is at least partially built out on about 4 or 5 of the frames. Nifty! The two frames nearest the queen box were covered in bees; I have no idea how much comb is built out on them.
The queen box was blissfully empty of queen bee, and there was a very cool honeycomb hanging off of it!
The bees were pretty cool with my inspection until I shook them off the queen box. Then they got a little buzzy, but the veil did its thing.
I put in the 10th frame on the westernmost position, and closed back up.
The second hive was about the same; about 1/4 of the sugar water was gone, and the queen box was empty. No cool comb on this one, although there was a little bit of wax buildup. Again, the center frames were so full of bees that I couldn’t see the comb at all.
I put the new frame into the easternmost position, and closed up.
We’ll go back and do a full inspection check in a week.