We lacked a bee smoker until now, so we were reluctant to do a full inspection of the hives. I was starting to get worried that if we had lost a queen somehow, we were about to have a hive collapse. So, Kristi and I went up to The Bee’s Knees and picked up a smoker, some fuel, and a veil and gloves for me.
Getting the smoker lit was not really a problem. I guess all that time in Clearwater did me some good. We used some of the smoker fuel (which is essentially uncombed cotton), a couple of pine cones, and a handful of pine needles. It took a minute to get started, but then it was throwing out some pretty good smoke.
Thus kitted out, Kristi and I went out to inspect the hives for the first time. We installed about 12 days ago.
Both hives had completely drained their sugar water; that’s a gallon per.
We only found the queen in the western hive; she was pretty easy to spot with the white dot on her.
However, the best way to tell if you’ve got a queen (and how well she’s doing) is by checking for brood. Both hives had essentially a full frame (both sides) of capped brood in the center, with somer very mature looking larvae for another 2 frames (that’s 4 frame-sides), and eggs at least another 2 frames (that’s 4 more frame-sides) out. So the middle 5 or 6 frames are nearly full of brood (with approximately 7,000 cells per frame, that’s about 35,000 baby bees in process per hive!). That’s some good laying for both queens.
There are another couple of frames worth of uncapped sugar water and pollen, and the outer 4 frames are essentially empty in both hives. I’d say that the eastern hive has started building out one side of each of the 2/9 frame pair, and neither has even touched the foundation wax on the 1/10 frame pair.
We need to get some more sugar water made up tonight, and installed no later than tomorrow morning.
There was quite a bit of burr comb in both hives, the western one being much worse. The center two frames of the western hive were combed together, and I had to cut them apart with the hive tool. There was sugar-water honey in a couple of the pieces I cut out, as well as a bunch of pollen.
The western hive had a couple of very odd looking larval combs on the #6 frame. There were about half-dozen combs that were nearly twice as tall as the rest, and the tops were slightly smaller. I wonder if those were in the process of being capped. Hmm.
We were definitely pretty rookie; the bees were getting pretty angry by the time we were done with the inspection. I can’t imagine how fast we’ll have to go with 2 brood deeps and some honey supers…
We sustained our first bee sting; Kristi got one in the thigh. I had some dead ones on my veil; I wonder if they stung the jacket or something.
Nothing was stuck together with propolis; I guess that’s coming later.
I was surprised and proud at how many bees our queens had laid.
It started to rain halfway through the second hive; the bees did not like that.
We tasted the pollen and “honey”. The pollen reminded me of artichoke, and there was definitely some dandelion in there.
Going to head back in there in another week or so, because the second deep needs to go on pretty soon. Those babies are on the way!
Our beehives are rolling along nicely.