Yesterday's Inspection

Yesterday I inspected all Beelandia's langstroth hives along with the nuc I started last week.  The weather was sunny but rather cool for a mid-June day.

Not much to new to report about the hives. In the hives installed this spring, the bees are working in the second deep box. The queen is laying eggs in  the top box, and the workers have stored or moved nectar up on the edges.

The walk-away nuc I created last week seems to be doing fine. I peeked in the top and saw queen cells capped and ready to hatch. I was a bit concerned about the number of workers in the nuc. I should've shook in more workers when I created the nuc. I will wait and see whether this creates any problems.

Today's Inspections

I spent the late morning/early afternoon inspecting all the langstroth hives. The temperature stayed pleasant, and sunny with temperatures in the 70s.

All three hives seem to be doing well. While I did not see the queen in any of the three hives I did see evidence of egg laying in each. Each hive has a fairly good brood pattern as well. I did find I few queen capped queen cells in the middle of some frames in Lib-BEE-taria which might mean supersecedure is occurring.

The bees were unusually gentle today.

I did take a frame of capped honey from Worker Bees to open up some space above the brood nest.

I dusted each hive with powdered sugar.

Next week I will probably reverse one or more of these hives.

Finally...An Inspection

The last two days have been cool and rainy but this morning the sun shone brightly. When I went out to inspect the hives at noon today, I could see that the bees had cabin fever, with all the activity in front of all four hives. I fired up the smoker, put on my veil, and opened up the two Minnesota Hygienic hives: Bee Glad..., and Metpropolis.

I only checked the top box of Bee Glad... and saw that the honey bees have been pretty busy this past week. They have begun to draw comb on half the plastic frames in the box, and the queen is laying on some of the frames. (I did see the queen on one of these frames.) Everything else looked fairly normal with plenty of stores to report. I closed up after a powdered sugar dusting.

The top bar hive, Metpropolis, is booming. I didn't see the queen in the hive but I did see plenty of evidence that she is there and laying well. I did notice the start of a supercedure cell but this is probably just a part of the normal insurance policy the bees are taking out. There is no evidence that the queen is deficient in anyway. Before I closed up this hive, I filled up a pesticide duster with powdered sugar and dusted the bees with sugar.

I am glad to report: no stings!

Week 16: Today in Metpropolis

It didn't look like I'd be able to inspect this morning. It was cloudy and threatening. By noon, however, the weather was sunny, hot and humid and the bees were out flying. This week the bees were bringing in a dark, almost turquoise pollen.

I began with Bee Glad... but quit in a bit. They were somewhat aggressive today and while I did not get stung I was really not focused enough to deal with that. I did get to scrape off some burr comb they built under the propolis trap. The comb was sticky, full of nectar, which made me sticky as well. Earlier in the week, I'd put an entrance reducer on this hive to give them a bit of an edge against the wasps trying to enter. I placed a shallow super on today.

I had more success in my inspection of Metpropolis. The residents seem to be doing just fine. The queen (whether the original or one raised by the bees in this hive) looks like she is healthy and productive and the bees are bringing in plenty of honey. I've been worried about this hive getting too crowded so today I took two bars of almost entirely filled with capped honey out and added an empty bar and the follower board to one end. (I had taken the follower boards out to make room for two more bars.) The two capped bars I put in storage for possible use in the fall wrap up.

The supersedure cells seem empty, atleast they are not yet capped. I think they were built as a safety measure.

Metpropolis Inspection

I inspected Metpropolis yesterday and moved a few combs around. The hive has drawn up three bars almost entirely of capped honey. Two others are almost there. The rest of the hive has bars with different proportions of honey, capped brood, and pollen. The three supersedure cells are capped. I pulled one comb filled with capped drone brood for inspection and found a few mites on the larvae. The hives were brimming with workers and a good portion of drones. I couldn't find the queen in all of it however. The bees were fairly gentle considering some of the manipulations I made.

Either the queen has slowed down her egg laying, which is entirely possible at this time of the year, or she is deficient, as the queen cells seem to indicate, because there was only a scant proportion of capped worker brood, and I had difficulty seeing any earlier stages of worker larvae. The bees don't act like they're queenless, but the supersedure cells indicate that they seem to have some problem with the current queen. I will monitor Metpropolis carefully.

Week 14: Six Stings and Possible Supersedure Plans

I was in Chicago this weekend and it rained yesterday. I was finally able to get into the hives late this morning and early in the afternoon on this muggy, partially cloudy day.

Not much to report on Bee Glad..., the Langstroth hive. The top box is so very heavy with honey. The other two contain some honey and brood in various stages. The hive is brimming with bees, all ready to sting me in order to protect the products of their own labor. I was stung 4 times working Bee Glad... this morning.

Metpropolis, the Kenyan top bar hive, is also brimming with bees but it seems that they also have some other plans afoot. There are a few bars heavy with honey but there was also an inordinate amount of capped drone brood, and three supersedure cells on the comb of one bar. While I found some capped worker brood, there was not as much as I thought there should be. I will watch Metpropolis closely over the next week or two to see what is up. I hope they can produce their own queen without my intervention.

I was stung twice working Metpropolis.