Happy Friday, everyone!
I found this pretty girl working hard while I was walking dogs earlier. Isn't she awesome?
Today was my third inspection on the hive. I opened the hive much more carefully today than last week. There was some burr comb again but I was ready for it! No crashing of frames, but I have to tell you, my girls were really cantankerous today. Totally cranky! They had a very unhappy buzz to them and one of them stung Tim right in the finger as he was pointing something out to me! She went right after him, it was crazy! Angry bees today!
The girls have slowed down wax building production a bit. They have built out about 5 frames of comb but I thought they would've been further along by now. After some post inspection discussion, we have determined that the package bees, my originals, are probably dying off at this point and the new girls, aren't old enough to do any of the building yet. That usually comes ten days after they're born. My guess is in about a week they will be back building comb like crazy. That will have given the new babies time to get their groove on.
Here's a little snippet of the view from the top of the frames with my angry girls.
You can definitely hear some angry buzzing going on in here today. There was no sunshine, so they could've been pissy about that. We also used some smoke on them and sometimes they don't like that either. I'll experiment with that a bit more next week. They've been pretty docile so far, but they can change since the queen is producing new bees. The new bees will be different than the bees that came in the package since Victoria is not their original momma.
I found a queen cup in the middle of one of the frames. I'm not going to worry too much about them making a new queen since this one is still laying well. There were larvae a few days old at most so I'll just keep my eyes open for any changes.
This is a queen cup. It's much different than a regular cell the queen lays egg in. It has to be bigger to hold a queen sized bee.
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All in all, I liked what I saw inside the hive. I wasn't happy they were so grumpy and I was especially unhappy that Tim got stung while trying to help me. Cranky girls! Hopefully next week they will be in a much better mood.
Until next time, bee kind. 🐝
In the top picture, is the big yellow hunk on her leg pollen?
ReplyDeleteYes. They collect pollen on the hairs of their rear legs. I call them pollen pants. :)
ReplyDeleteOK so I see she has the pollen in her mouth, does she put it "in her pants?" How does it get from the flower to the pants? Then how does it become honey?
ReplyDeleteOk, my reply was deleted by mistake...
DeleteIn my post "Working Girls" I mentioned pollen pants. The bees will rub their legs together moving the pollen to the hairs on the rear legs where it collects to make the pollen pants. It's actually not in her mouth, just on her legs. They will carry their weight in pollen back to the hive. They will mix the pollen with a bit of nectar from flowers or honey to make a substance referred to as bee bread, which is then fed to the honey bee larvae. Pollen is a source of protein for them. Honey production will be a post for another day, but pollen isn't used to make it. 🐝