Bearding, Brood Boxes, and Swarm Cells. Oh My!

Happy Friday, folks! Today was another inspection day! It was a busy day for sure. First off, I got a text from Tim today showing me that my girls were bearding on the front of the hive today. They've never done that before!

It was a warm day and sometimes they "go onto the front porch" to cool off. But it was definitely getting crowded in there, too. So, a third brood box was definitely necessary. This brings me to a little problem. I have two Medium boxes left, BUT, they are both covering my feeder right now! A single Medium box isn't high enough to put the cover on. I don't have a spare deep, so I need some help fast. 

Tim to the rescue! He built a cedar feeding box for me! He made it cedar so it would match the rest of my boxes. What a good egg, right?! I finished staining it yesterday and it was dry today so it was ready to be put to use. He even put handles on it. I love it so much! He's such a good guy. 

Alright, that means that now I can use one of my Mediums for a third brood box and have one to spare! Awesome! 

We opened the hive and Tim maneuvered the frames so I could take a few pics of my frames for you. All of the frames were drawn so the hive was definitely ready for another box.

Here is a frame with a great brood pattern. Victoria is kicking ass! In the upper right hand corner you can see a bit of honey capped as well. You can see the difference in color between the brood caps and the honey caps as well.

You can see her handy work here as well. The larvae are so amazing to see! The nurse bees are busy taking care of them.

Here is a little closeup of that same picture. They look like little bagels in there! I love seeing the babies! 

I will check on them again next week to see how much they've built out the third box. They will store honey in there as well. We could be a couple weeks out from putting on the honey super! That will be amazing. 

So on we went to check out Tim's hives. Unfortunately, one of his hives is most likely queenless. We found older capped brood but no eggs or larvae. When we pulled out a brood frame, we found another surprise.

At the very top of this picture is a swarm cell. It's a queen cell but it was on the bottom of the frame. There were other queen cells along that frame as well. No eggs, larvae and finding queen cells are pretty big indicators that the hive is without a queen. It's a shame too as she was an overwintered queen. She was just not producing quickly at all. She may have died or they killed her and are making a new one to carry on the colony.

The rest of the hives are doing well. They all have honey supers on them and are slowing making the golden nectar! 

Next week could be exciting since my hive has a ton of bees now. They could easily build out that box pretty quickly. I'm pretty excited to check on them for sure.

Until next time, bee kind 🐝

A Group Effort

Hi all! Sorry for the delay. Had lots going on after our inspection on Friday and didn't have a chance to post!

The inspection was great. We had a couple other beekeepers with us to help inspect the five hives on the property. I had done my hive inspection myself so no pics from that unfortunately.

Tim, Sue and George were all involved with the rest of the hives so I can share a few pics from there.

First off, wow! My girls are working that 2nd brood box like crazy. A 3rd brood box will go on this week which will make my hive, a deep plus 2 medium brood boxes. That should get them thru the cold winter months. Victoria has been a laying fool! Her laying patterns are fantastic. All bunched together without much spacing. I could not be more pleased with her so far!

Tim has a great queen in his 2nd hive. Here is a great pattern from that hive.

Isn't that pretty? Honey stores outline the top and sides around the brood pattern. He was very happy with this hive.

He is checking out his queen's handy work.

We also opened his giant hive to add another honey super to the collection. He easily has 80 pounds of honey on it so far. It's really amazing!

A couple of girls were playing peek-a-boo from inside the honey super. They are just so dang cool. I've enjoyed this more than I can ever share.

Tim also met with another beekeeper a couple days ago who is grafting queens from his giant hive. They have grafted 80 queens from his queen's eggs. This is her 3rd year and she has built up an amazingly strong colony over and over. After 3 splits, she is still building at an amazing pace! 

My understanding is this: they take 3 day old eggs and place them in artificial queen cups. They put these cups in a Nuc box with nurse bees who feed them the royal jelly. 16 days later they have queens. There is more to it than that, but I'm not experienced enough to talk too much about it. Here is a quick shot of the rearing frame.

One of the Nucs had overzealous bees as well. They had built a "heart" out of wax comb. It's pretty incredible as well. I think they do incredible things all the time though.

Hopefully, I'll have more pics of my hive for you in a few days. This was a fun inspection with more of us playing in the hives. I'm sure it won't be the last time we collaborate.

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

Victoria's Blog Debut!

Happy Friday, everyone! 

I had a very unexpected happiness fill me today. Tim, my mentor, had purchased more sugar for the bee juice and I went by his house to get it. I didn't have my bee suit with me so I had no intention of doing an inspection today. Wearing shorts without a full suit to do an inspection isn't something I want to try anytime soon. My girls are pretty docile, usually, but I've seen them sting so I wanted to be covered. Tim says, "hey I have bee pants!" Of course he does! So even though I'd never heard of them before, I slipped them on over my shorts. The jacket and veil were donned and off we went with  a smoker to check out the girls!

My only concern today was to see if they had moved up into the 2nd brood box. Tim pulled up one of the middle frames to see how much was drawn out. It looked pretty good! There were two drawn frames in the new box so it should only be a couple weeks now before we can get to some honey production! 

HOWEVER, the biggest and bestest surprise came when Tim pulled out the second frame and saw Victoria on the bottom of the frame! This is her first blog appearance!

Ladies and Gents, may I present Queen Victoria! As you can see, she's much bigger than the other girls. Her body doesn't have stripes like the worker and drone bees and her wings only come halfway down her body, whereas, worker bees' wings are generally the length of their bodies.

You can see her short wings better in this photo. She is always surrounded by her royal court who constantly feed her and clean up after her. She is big and beautiful and I'm so thrilled she came out for a photo today!

So my day was made! I saw they had moved up to their new box and her royal badness came up as well. It was a very good day! Time to make more juice for the girls! Have a great weekend!

Until next time, bee kind! 🐝

Swarms and Slo Mo

Howdy, folks! Happy Tuesday to you! So yesterday I got a Snapchat photo from my niece. It showed a swarm in the middle of a busy intersection in Chicago. At Michigan and Madison Avenues! That's a busy place! The bees don't care about that, they just knew their current home was not what they needed any longer and took off for greener pastures!

Why do they swarm? Well, they will swarm for a couple of reasons. First, it's how they form a new colony of bees to keep reproduction at a high. The queen will take about half of the current colony with her and they will continue to grow. The bees will fill their stomachs with honey and leave with the queen. They will be at their most docile while they are swarming. The other half of the colony left behind will usually have queen or swarm cells that will hatch a new queen to reproduce the colony.  Another reason they will swarm is if their current hive doesn't have enough space for them to grow. So make sure they have enough frames and boxes to expand upon!

In one of my first posts, I showed you a pic of a bee swarm hanging under a picnic table. They will find anywhere to hang (literally) while they look for a new home. This colony simply found a bicycle!

Isn't that amazing? There was an article written in the Chicago Tribune about it today as well.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-loop-bee-swarm-captured-20160606-story.html

On another note, Tim brought me to his other bee yard this afternoon. A woman who owns some acreage, was looking for a beekeeper to bring bees to her place for pollination. Tim happily obliged and brought two nucs to her property. They are doing very well. They're drinking about 3 quarts of juice per week and are currently working on their 2nd brood box. We filled their feeders and left.

We didn't do any inspections, but the land around the hives was beautiful.

I wanted to do something fun with my bees before I left for the day. On my iPhone, I noticed a slo mo feature on the video camera. As soon as I saw that, I knew what I wanted to do. Anyone that tells you that bees are great flyers, really hasn't watched them at all. Put it in full screen for the full effect. Enjoy!

Wasn't that fun? I could watch them all day.

Until next time, bee kind 🐝

A Glorious Inspection Day!

Good afternoon! What a glorious day here in Gurnee. 75 degrees without a cloud in the sky. Unbelievable day and my bees thought so too. They were bringing in all kinds of pollen when I got to their hive. They had a happy hum going throughout and we only used a minimum of smoke to inspect the hive. 

The good news is they built up enough comb on the frames that I was able to add another brood box. The bad news is, I have no pictures of it. I was working alone in my hive as Tim hurt his back and was doing other things. I did not see Victoria, but boy has she done some laying since last Friday! There was capped brood all over and the girls had built up the wax on all frames except one side of one of the outer frames. Exciting! Their numbers have increased as well! All of the new bees are working hard as cleaners, nurse bees feeding the new babies, and some are now old enough to build wax. If you remember the chart I posted a few weeks back, they have jobs at certain points in their short lives.

The older package bees have been dying off. There are some foragers heading out still but the number at the front porch were smaller than I remember. That will change in about a week. The ones building wax will soon be guarding the fort then leaving the hive to bring back pollen and nectar. It's so exciting! I'll try to get some shots next week when I get to check a second brood box in addition to the one on the first floor.

Because Tim's back was angry at him, I helped him do some things to his hives, like pick up boxes and put hives back together so he didn't have to bend. He's a good egg. I was happy to help him with whatever he needed. :)

The view from atop the honey super on Tim's big hive

Tim's biggest hive has two honey supers on it already. The top box is nearly full and holy heck that thing was HEAVY! It was easily 40-50 pounds! I had to lift that box so he could add a 3rd box! It's only June 2nd and the nectar flow is ON! These girls are working hard and were less than happy that we were taking their boxes apart. One of them followed me all the way back to the house while trying to sting my face. Thank goodness for veils! Gotta keep your eyeballs safe!

Here's another shot from the honey super. You can see how many girls are working hard in there. It's really amazing to watch and listen to them up close. 

Four of the hives on the property (minus the big hive with honey supers) needed to be replenished with bee juice. They are thirsty and building wax on their frames like crazy. The essential oils in the juice really help with the wax production. Soon the boxes of frames will be finished and they will be able to find food on their own. You don't want to feed sugar water when you have a honey super on. They will just store the sugar water and it won't be honey.

So, looking toward next week, my girls will hopefully have a couple frames of drawn comb in the new brood box. Victoria will keep laying in all the new wax they've drawn in the lower box and the new bees will keep changing jobs, being promoted along the way.

I got this awesome shot of one of Tim's girls while she was taking a breather on the honey frame.

Until next time, bee kind 🐝