May 20 inspection. Lots of pictures.

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It's been a while since my last post. This one documents an inspection of both hives. Please look over my shoulder and tell me if you see anything that I'm missing. Thanks.

Here's the "Alpha" hive from the top. I'll be pulling the frames from back to front.
D4 - Drone foundation.
11 - Full sheets of small cell.
4
10
9
8
13
7
D3 - Drone again.
Division Feeder. (A device to drown bees.)


D4 was untouched so I didn't bother taking a picture. This is 11. Not much action. Now that I think of it I should have shuffled it into the middle of the cluster. Next time.










Here's 4. Back on May 5 I borrowed it from the other hive. It had a lot of capped brood and this hive needed a jump.

It bothers me a bit that I don't see any larvae in the cells.







The other side of 4. A bit more capped brood here, but not really great.

It is on the outer fringe of the cluster though.









Frame 10. Still nothing to brag about. Sure wish the camera caught some uncapped brood.

Maybe it did but I don't know how to look.








>
The other side of 10. Ho Hum. At least I don't see any Varroa yet. Do you?












Frame 9.
As you can see the amount of progress increases as we move through the hive.

Still can't say for sure that I'm seeing any brood. Those few capped cells could be drone brood in worker cells. That would be bad news.






The other side of 9. Wimpy wimpy.

Worry level goes up a notch.











Frame 8.
We are well into the heart of the brood cluster area. I really think this should look better.










Flip side of 8. Sure wish it looked better.

Let's move on to 13.











Frame 13. Same story.

I think that I should be seeing sheets of sealed brood by now.










Flip side of 13.












Frame 7.
This is where they started building when the package was first hived.

I think I'm seeing a lot of capped drone cells here. They look domed.








D3.

The last frame and the other drone magnet. It's a bad angle, but they sure are busy.









Flip side of the last drone cell frame.

Am I paranoid or is this hive queenless?

Here we go to the other hive, which is doing much better.








Here comes "Bravo". I didn't get a picture of the frame tops. (Nuts). Here's the order from back to front again.
D2 - Drone
14 - Small cell. Full sheet.
5 - Ditto.
18S - Small cell strip. Added May 3.
3 - Full sheet.
2 - Ditto.
23N - Frame w/ no foundation. Just the wedge strip turned down. May 3 also.
1 - Full sheet.
6 - Ditto.
D1 - Drone again.

Drone cell frame. Nothing doing. Let's cut that burr off.












Frame 14. This is more like it.

Like the other hive, this one started building at the other end. This frame is in the suburbs.








The other side of 14. Still can't say for sure that I see larvae in the open cells. The sheets of sealed area sure look nice.











18S. This was a quarter height strip a couple of weeks ago. Quite a bit of progress. They did use the opportunity to build some drone cells.










The flip side of 18s. Now I see larvae.













Frame 3. Lots of nice small cells capped and not domed.












3 reversed.

Can't tell if the blur is from glare or smoke.










Frame 2. Going great guns.













Frame 2 turned over. Very nice.













23n. Foundationless and looking as good as, or better than, the starter strip. Still more drone cells than I'd like to see downtown.










Flip side of the frame that they built from scratch. It's hard to see anything with all the bees in the way.

I sure like what they've done though!








Frame #1. This is where the building started, right in the top left corner.

I'm seeing a lot of brood, capped and not. It's a happy happy picture.








Nice to see a family working together. Flip side of 1.











To tell the truth, I got lost here somewhere. There seems to be one more frame than I have made notes for. It's hard to scroll about as I compose the page.

Oh well. Whichever this is it looks pretty fine.









The flip side of frame whatever.












Drone comb being used for stores. The best laid plans....






No drones on the other side either. Just honey.












Angie took the burr comb home to show the kids. It is kind of pretty. I was going to just drop it into the hive and let the girls work out what to do about it.









Here's me working the hives. The chair saves my poor old back. No protective clothing but I'm wearing my lucky socks. I haven't been stung since hiving the first package last month.

So there you have it. Quite a long post.
What do you think? I'd love to know. Thanks!

Really, really good news!

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List of things to do today.

• Cross fingers.
• Find brood in the hives, proving that we have laying queens.
• Dust with powdered sugar to knock down Varroa mites. (If any)

I started with "Bravo" hive which is the strongest. That would put the best news first.

This image didn't capture smoke, but it's there. Before anyone yells that the smoker shouldn't be tilted forward like that: There's a tall tight roll of cardboard inside. Little chance of hot cinders blowing out.




Moment of truth. Do we have sealed brood? That takes 9 days from the time the egg is laid. It's been 13 days.

Bingo! The solid yellow area is sealed brood.

Just then an old car smashed into a tree. I was too happy to notice, and the bees didn't mind either.







A flat on look at the sealed cells. Happy days!

These frames are getting heavy!







Puffing everyone with a light dusting of powdered sugar. 10X confectioners sugar to be exact. I'm using a home made Varroa Blaster.

I made 2 modifications.

• Since I don't wear nylons anymore, I found some material with lots of tiny holes. It's blue.
  
• There's a 3 inch long 3/8" bolt inside. It agitates the sugar nicely when shaken. Ok, the truth. I was using it to push the sugar through the funnel and dropped it. A marble or something might be a good idea. Thanks, Bee Wrangler!
  

And now to Alpha hive. Let's cut to the chase. This is the picture. If you aren't a beekeeper, it's bugs. If you are, it's porn.

See the single servings of shrimp cocktail? Those are bee larvae. They are floating in food provided by glands in the bodies of the nurse bees. When they graduate to pupae they will be sealed in and emerge as new bees on day 21. The flat parts in the picture are sealed brood.

I think this is the other side of the same frame. The focus is not as perfect, and it's further away.

When I use Gimp to really zoom in, I swear that I can see a tiny pair of black eyes peering out from one of the cells.

That's it for today from happy me. Tune in next time. Bee nice to Mother Nature.

April 15

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8 days since hiving now. It's warm and the bees are flying. Those blue lines on the front are what I call the "address". Bees see blue really well and remember patterns. The other hive has a different pattern.

Today I'm determined to look for signs of eggs or brood. No bee brush today.


About 5 frames in this one have some drawn comb. Looks to be about 50% built up. By watching for a while I could look down into the cells. Lots of pollen. Lots of liquid which I assume to be syrup. No eggs that I can see even with a magnifying glass. No cells are sealed.



I looked for queens but didn't find any. That could simply mean that I don't know how to look for them yet.







This doesn't look like great news. I think it's a
supersedure cell structure. Not a sign of a strong queen at all. If there's no queen they won't have fertile eggs to make one of their own so supersedure would be hopeless. Might be time to order queens. Off to ask at BeeSource.

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Late update:

Had a nice conversation with the good folks at the Beesource message board. The structure is just burr comb. I can't see eggs because of the white background. No cells are capped because it's too early. Life is good. Thanks!

April 12

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I jumped the gun a little and looked into the hives. All good news so far. Found both queen cages and they were empty. Here's a picture of "Bravo". The bees started drawing comb in the front top corner right next to the feeders. They even built a little comb right on the feeders. (Not shown.)



Here's a frame from Bravo. Looks to be about 25% drawn out. The drawn area is about 4 frames wide and tapers as it moves away from this frame.






A frame from "Alpha". About the same situation. The white area is the foundation that I gave them to build on. You can see a little bit of yellow at bottom left. That's where they have "drawn out" or built the cells up nice and deep.

A quick look and it was time to close the hives. No use slowing them down at this critical time.

See the ones on the upper edges of the box? They would have been squished by the cover so they had to be moved. I tried brushing them off. They didn't like the brush at all and let me know where I could stick it. I didn't get stung, but they got in my face and followed for a few yards as I retreated, blowing smoke behind me. When I came back I slowly slid the cover on, giving them time to move. They were much more happy with that. So much for my brand new bee brush.

I wanted to get a peek at some cells to see if they contained eggs. The bees were 3 or 4 deep on the parts that I wanted to see. Decided to skip it for now and ask about it on the message board. I'm told I can just push them aside with a finger and they won't mind too much. They're cool with things organic like fingers. Not so much with plastic brush bristles.

First Buzz

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Here are the 2 hives in my basement ready to go. The "D" frames are drone foundation. The rest are small cell. All are full sheets.

Hive #1 has a plastic division feeder in the left slot. #2 has a home made wooden feeder. (Thanks, Andy)



Now a road trip to Reeseville, Wi to pick up the bees at Lapps Bee supply. I didn't plan on taking pictures along the way, but hey. How often do you see this?

In a tiny town whose name I can't remember, the weinermobile was rolling out of a parking lot. There's a car repair shop there that works on rebuilding them. This one is done and headed for Mexico. Ok, back to bees.




Here are the girls in 3 pound packages. They are inside an insulated semi trailer with heating / air conditioning units on both ends. Nice and warm in there.

Just above the date stamp are my 2 packages. We used that red bow saw to cut them apart from other packages. There are wooden strips that join groups of 5.

Back in town the bees are fed syrup squirted onto the screen. I held some white paper against the screen to catch drips. Against that background I could see hundreds of little tongues darting out to lick the paper.

Puff the quality control cat payed close attention to the operations.

The package is open. I'm on the right, with the queen cage in my right hand. I expected a wooden cage with a wire to hang it on the frame tops. Nope. It's plastic and no wires.
In a moment that was completely innocent of common sense, I jammed it between a couple of frames. It was cool out and I wanted to get the hive buttoned up. No excuse, I know.

Several frames have been removed. You can see them by my left foot. I'm starting to dump the bees in. The package cover is sticking out on the left there. It's still attached by one nail and keeps swinging around to block the hole. After I'd struggled a while, I pulled it off.
See all the bees on my leg? My whole self looks like that. Bees are boiling out everywhere. But I'm not scared....yet.

Still shaking, thumping, and dumping. The hole is right in the middle so I tip one end up, shake, then the other end up. Works great at first but the returns diminish quickly. I think next time I'll just pull off a screen and to heck with the deposit.




Study this one boys and girls. See the layers of clothing, all open? How nice and warm! The girls are getting cozy in there. When I move they get squeezed and signal their displeasure quite clearly. By the expression I was probably being stung on the back of the neck under the collar. Or on my belly under the belt, or the left wrist under the cuff, or....

Looks like about half the bees are inside here. They are clustered together to keep warm. The queen has fallen, of course, and is somewhere under the frames. I sure hope they cluster around her and keep her warm.

The frames were all sprayed with syrup, so wherever the bees go they will find a meal. No problem after they find the feeder.

Done dumping now. Most of the ladies are in their new home. The cage will lay in front of the hive with the opening near the entrance. Most of the stragglers will find their way over to their sisters.

The bottom of the hive is screened, and there is a sliding tray underneath. It's a pretty tight fit so there shouldn't be much air infiltration to chill them.

Starting to slide the rest of the frames in. I'm going slow and gentle so they can get out of the way. They do get the idea and oblige.








Most of the frames are in now. With less room on the side, they spread around and over the frames. Some have already drowned in the feeder, but that was to be expected. I put a wooden float in there, but it stayed down. Oh well. Now I know.



Ready for the covers, at last. Whew.

At first I tried brushing them down between the frames. Then I remembered there there's a bit of space under the inner cover. I closed it up and crossed my fingers.

Off to the other hive with lessons learned. There's video of that one and I'll post when I find someplace to park the files.

Many thanks to Gayle for all the help, and letting me use his garden. Thanks also to Angie who ran the camera. She got some pretty tight shots for someone afraid of bees!