Stuff Happens...

Howdy, folks! So sorry for the long stretch between posts. The weather hasn't been very good so I haven't been able to look inside my barbie dream house. Today's inspection was, in a word,  disastrous! There is a reason they tell you to work slowly and not rush things. 

To start I'm going to apologize for the lack of photos. Once you hear what happened, you'll understand.

Soooo, all was fine when I took off the hive cover and the two medium boxes that surround my feeder. It went downhill after that...

As you know, I have a feeder sitting on the inner cover. Instead of taking the feeder off first, I left it on the inner cover and decided to lift it off in one shot. Bad idea. The bees, without my knowing, had built some comb under the inner cover which is connected to the frames below it. Once I lifted the cover, it pulled up the frames it was attached to and bringing the bees up with them. The comb started to rip so the frames crashed back into the hive making the bees insanely angry. The frames landed all crooked so I couldn't put the inner cover back down. I had my mentor with me and he helped to get the feeder off the inner cover so I could put it down. Holy "this hive is so pissed off", Batman! They were everywhere and trying their best to show me just how pissed they were. Thankfully I was wearing my veil, gloves and suit. We used a little smoke too, which did seem to help.

We got the frames back in order and they started to settle down. They had bearded on the front of the hive (meaning they are all over the front of the hive so it looks like a big beard on a face)

photo credit bunnybeeonline.com

My biggest fear was Queen Victoria was in the lot of bees that were flying everywhere and falling onto the ground. There were SO MANY that came out of the hive when the frames fell. I looked at all of them and couldn't see her anywhere. I started checking the frames once we got them back into the hive. On the third frame, there she was in all her glory. YAY! It was the first time I'd seen her since the installation. She was still very busy and making great brood patterns on the brood frames. That was a huge relief. Because I had made them so angry, I was doing a fast check so I could close up the hive. I wanted to photograph her, but I will wait to do that next time. 

They were still drinking a ton of their bee juice. They were down to about 2 quarts so I will bring more for them this weekend. My mentor has now switched from regular sugar water, to the sugar, tea, thyme, essential oils infused bee juice. His bees started drinking it like crazy and were not drinking the regular sugar water very much at all. Hey, they know a good thing when they get it! 

I took the time to put the beetle blocker shim back on the hive. We took it off due to the placement of the queen on the paint stick during the installation. It was getting in the way. It'll start getting pretty warm in the next weeks so I don't want to give the small hive beetles any opportunity to get inside. They can get inside your hive and "slime" your hive with their larvae if they get out of control. This shim was created by Clark Taplin and has really done well for many beekeepers. I have high hopes for it. Here is a video about it below:

I got all of my frames back in order, saw my queen, and closed the hive up so they could get back to business. My mentor said it best when he said, "shit happens!" And boy did it ever today. At least I stayed calm and got the hive back together. My queen is safe and can get everyone back in line. We just needed to shave off the comb so hopefully this won't happen again. I'll be sure to be watchful next time I open the hive, though. I really hated stressing out my girls.

Here is a shot of the front of the hive after we were finished.

Most of the girls found their way back inside but a few stayed on the front porch for awhile. I can't say that I blame them. Some serious stuff was going on inside! Hopefully during the next inspection, my girls will remain calm and not be stressed out by my fumbling around. I knew I would be making mistakes and I definitely learned a big lesson today. That's good though, one less thing to repeat going forward. Right?

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝