Videoed hive inspection.

I did a hive inspection on Monday the 25th which would have been...

Day 26 - I inspected one hive, the brown one (I'm really gonna need to name these hives...) and it looked really good. I had a friend hold the camcorder but she was more interested in looking at the bees than making sure they stayed in the frame. But here's the video anyway there are a couple of good shots.  I ended up putting 3 more quarts of sugar in each top feeder and I cleaned mold off of one of the inner covers.

Day 26 Hive Inspection

Day 30 (Friday the 29th) - just checked the top feeders and the brown one is empty (with lots of bees still trying to eat) and the green one looks like it has about 1/2 quart (with very few bees eating).  There is considerable mold on the inside of both covers and the inside top cover.  Tomorrow I will go out and clean the mold and see if I can get the dead bees out of the top feeders. Also I need to do an inspection of the green box so I'll set up the tripod and try to do that with a stationary camera.

I'm concerned that the green hive has hive beetles and they may be impacting the hive strength.  I did not see hive beetles in the brown hive when I checked them last Monday. Tomorrow I will go into the green hive and check how they are doing.

More syrup for the girls.

Day 23 - Friday April 22nd, I checked their syrup yesterday and they still had some. Checked today at 4pm and they were out.  I made up some and put in about 2 quarts each. so they went through about 3 quarts in 6 days. I'm thinking I should just put more in there as it looks like it would accommodate about 5 quarts altogether.

I also refilled their water dispenser.  I looks like it holds about a gallon. I'm sure they are not drinking all that. I put it on there about 20 days ago. Most of it probably evaporated.

I opened the top just to see if they were drawing out comb and a lot of moist heat came out of there. I'm sure that was not good. But it was interesting to see they had drawn out some but nowhere near the amount that they had after the first 3 days.

Lets see its day 23 and the queen already had capped brood on day 17 so there should be new bees in a few more days...  maybe Sunday or Monday...

But they wont be making wax for another 10 to 15 days and I wont see them for another 20 days...

The Honey Bee Life Cycle

View from my chair

Second Post

Day 16 - Ok so Friday the 15th, I went over to a "neighbor's" house who has bees. I got his name and number from one of the Bee club's of which I am a member. He has been keeping bees for 3 years and is a very sweet fellow. He showed me how he goes into his hives (he has 3 deeps and 3 nucs) and we saw the queens and saw the brood and he told me I was a natural. I have a very gentle way about me and the bees totally ignored me. They actually ignored us because he too has a gentle way about him.

I felt my confidence increase so I went home and opened up my hives. It was just me so no pictures. I found the queen in one of my hives but not the other. I thought I saw a supersedure cell so I was worried. I did see eggs, larva and capped brood in both hives


Day 17 - I had been worrying about the hive in which I did not see the queen but everybody I talked to said that if I saw the eggs and larva and capped brood they were sure she was in there. However the state apiarist called and offered to come over and look at my hives. So even though I had just gone in there the day before I jumped at the chance to have him look at my hives.

He opened the hive and pulled out each frame. I did spot the queen in the hive I thought was queenless (yeah). And showed him the thing that I thought was a supersedure cell, he scraped it off declaring that it was simply burr comb. Then he did this maneuver on one of the frames which was like a flick where he forced the bees to fall into the hive. One of them got mad and tried to sting him. I saw her on his glove and she was really straining to get her stinger through the rubber. It was kind of funny. I pointed her out to him and asked him if she was trying to sting him. He said yes and flicked her off of his hand and she flew away unhurt. All the while they were still ignoring me.

He moved empty frames from the outsides in a couple of spaces and turned them around so that the bees would see that they needed to draw out comb on those spots as well.  He told me my hives were 70% full and that I should put another box on top of each which I did. Then he said I should keep feeding them so that they have what they need to draw out the comb in the two new boxes. So I made more syrup and made sure there was about 3 quarts in each top feeder.

Day 18 & 19 - I have pulled up a chair and put it outside the hives about 5 feet from the entrance. The apiarist told me that the bees will use it as a landmark.  I have been watching them come and go, they are actually very enjoyable to watch.  I realize that they have no rudder and have an issue steering. When they come into land they're kind of like a bowling ball heading for pins. I can hear them in my head yelling "watch out I'm coming in!" and then they bowl into the other bees who are standing at the entrance.

Day 20 - checked the syrup they still have plenty.

I have been reading about bees being gentle in the spring and being grumpy in the fall. Some people feel like this is because there are more of them in the fall, I'm wondering if they are reacting to not having an abundance of food...  If my bees are gentle because I am feeding them maybe I should just keep feeding them? But if they need adversity to become stronger maybe I shouldn't feed them?  In any event as long as they are drawing out comb I'll feed them. That's what the apiarist said so that's what I'm gonna do.

The Bees have landed!

I'm am starting beekeeping and I've been told that I need to keep a journal so here it is.

Day 1 - Thursday, March 31st 2016 - with the assistance of a mentor who is a 50 year veteran to beekeeping, misted the wax foundation with syrup, installed two packages (by shaking them out onto queen cage) into 8 frame mediums. Put 2 quarts of syrup in top feeders.

Day 3 - Saturday, April 2nd - Got a chicken water feeder and put pebbles in the trough area so the bees would have something to stand on.  They really don't seem to be using it but it's there if they want it.

Day 4 - Sunday, April 3rd - checked to see that queens were out of their queen cage.

Also noticed that some of them had shoved themselves into a little gap that was between the feeder and the hive body.

Day 5 - Monday, April 4th - put 2 more quarts of syrup in the top feeders, it seemed low to me.

The weather has been unpredictable both cool and windy and warm and sunny.

I'm noticing that the Green hive seems much more active that the Brown hive.  I did have an awning up over them for the first couple of days but it seemed to be keeping them in the shade too much so I took it down. My thought was to keep the worst of any down pours off of them mostly because the hives have tin roofs and I know that vibrations bother them. I thought the awning would help mitigate that. So I have put thin plywood on them now to help with the rain vibrations. I hope they like it...

Day 12 - Monday, April 11th - and I'm wanting to check for eggs but my mentor has encouraged me to wait. He says the queen is not 'ready' (whatever that means) yeah he's not what I would call a communicator.

Day 14 - Wednesday, April 13th - 10:39am about 50 degrees in the sun (feels colder) I'm feeling like I need to check the syrup and maybe add to it if it's low. They have been fairly active, again the Green one is more active than the Brown one.

Ok that's about all I can remember from the last two weeks. I'll do a new post for the next entry.

Wish me luck !

Addendum:   5pm - ok, so I did go out at around 3:30 and checked the top feeders which were bone dry. I made up some syrup and put in about 2 quarts in each hive. They seemed to take advantage of the food so I guess it made them 'happy'.