The Healthy Honeybee

It was nice to have friends along on our trip out to the beeyard yesterday! My girls have been very interested in the bees, and I think this has rubbed off on their friends. We all went out for the inspection, and they were able to see the queen, workers, honey, pollen, brood, and eggs. We also saw some workers with pollen in the pollen sacs on their hind legs. We didn't notice any drones, though, which was a bit disappointing because my girls have been asking me if they can hold one ever since I came back from the beekeeping course in Guelph and told them about my drone-holding experience.

All the kids had no qualms about being up close and personal with the bees, asking lots of questions and making sure they saw everything there was to see!
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The populations of the hives seem to be expanding - I think I've got bees now that were eggs when I bought the frames. The time it takes for the worker bees to develop, from egg to worker, is about 21 days, so that makes sense.

The visit today went well. The mistake I corrected last time seems to have been taken in stride by all the lovely ladies in the hives. I noticed that the honeycomb I uncapped and scraped off a bit has now been re-capped, and everything fits better.

In the hives I saw eggs, larvae, capped brood, and one queen. The other queen was hiding from me, I guess. I saw eggs, though, so I'm not too worried about it. If she is gone, the workers will raise a new queen with the eggs they have available.
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Some people have to learn the hard way. I didn't think I was one of those people, but apparently this time I am. In the beekeeping course I took, the concept of 'bee space' was drilled into us. It's important to keep a certain small distance between the frames in the hive in order to keep them easy to work with. If you leave too much space, the bees will build crazy bulging comb and make the frames harder to work with.

Guess what.

Somehow I managed to completely forget that lesson. Oops. So, when I went to check on my hives, I had crazy bulging comb and frames that were hard to work with.

So...

I had to scrape off the crazy bulging comb. At least it wasn't brood comb I was destroying. I think if it had been brood comb I might have tried to think of another way, but honeycomb? Yummy! They'll fix it.
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A sunny afternoon finally came on a day when I could go to the beeyard. It's been about two weeks since I installed the bees, and I've been itching to go inspect them for about a week.

Nothing tastes better than honey and comb, warm and drippy, straight from the hive. My girls thought so too.
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I'm not sure if this is sisterly affection, or sanitation crew. When I went to check on my bees Tuesday, this drama was playing out in front of one of the hives. The bee on her back is not really moving much, but still alive. Her sister was hanging around, and to me it looked like she was trying to help the bee get back up on her feet. However, I know bees are tidy creatures, so perhaps the intention of the healthy one was not so noble.
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I forgot to put bricks on top of the hives this afternoon when I was there, and I also wanted to check and make sure nothing weird was going on, so I drove out to the beeyard for the 3rd time today to check the hives (no opening, just watching the entrance) and put the bricks on top. I saw bees coming and going, some with pollen, most without. Seems like they've accepted the homes we made for them, so I will be able to sleep tonight.
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Here I am with one of my nucs. Tibor Szabo's beeyard is behind me - this is where my bees came from. A big thank you to Tibor for all of the helpful advice that came with the bees!

Now I feel like a beekeeper - I actually have bees to call my own. I hope they like their new homes.
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