Bzzzy and Barbara's first hive inspection

[bzzzybee]

So Barbara and I went into both hives yesterday evening. We hived the nucs last Sunday morning in the only break in the cold and rain we had. Added baggie feeders and then left them alone (except for the daily peek to see if they were taking the feed). Over the last week they've been flying a lot, even though the temps have been cool...not cold exactly. We've seen lots of yellow-orange pollen on the returning field bees, and while they've been taking the syrup, it doesn't seem like it was at a very high rate.

We opened the heavy colony first. This is the one with the smaller bees and larger population. The first very obvious issue is that they have been building comb, but not in the lovely frames with starter strips we provided. Oh no...they're building up from the top boards of the frames from the nuc. I suspect the reason is that we had to use an empty medium hive body to house the baggie, so there's lots of space to build. We start by removing the #2 frame...the bees have started building down a bit on this one, but the comb is offset from the center with a gap between it and the starter strip. Harumph! The #3 frame is one of the nuc frames and is chock full of pollen and uncapped nectar. #4 (nuc) has capped and uncapped honey. #5 (nuc) is the classic brood nest frame, with capped and uncapped brood in the center and nectar on the sides. The queen was merrily making her way around this frame. I was very surprised that the queen is a) HUGE, and b) much, much darker than we expected. I was thinking we would have that golden queen we've seen in so many pictures, but her abdomen was almost black. Frame #6 (nuc) is the duplicate of #5, with lots of capped brood...as is #7. I think this hive is going to have a very nice explosion of bees very shortly. Frames 8-10 are empty with starter strips, completely untouched.

With warmer weather forecast, we went ahead and split the brood nest, putting the one slightly built empty frame in. The final hive structure is EENNNENNEE. In addition, we removed the baggie feeder (for the moment) to reduce the area available for building above the hive. The frames seem chock full of nectar and brood, so they should be fine for a while without it. I have some baggie-sized supers on order that I'll use once they arrive if we're in a dearth. Once big question I have is how do I know when we're in a flow or in a dearth? I'll dig through the forums, as I'm sure someone's answered that before. Hopefully the measures we took will encourage them to draw on the frames where their combs belong! We did notice that the new upsidedown comb we removed had eggs in it, so the queen is a busy girl!

Hive#2 was very similar, except that they have not really drawn any new comb, just a bit dangling from the bottoms of the frames. We took a little more time to look at these frames as there are fewer bees, so we could see the contents of the comb more easily. We saw open honey, capped honey, pollen, capped worker brood, a couple capped drone cells, open brood and eggs. The queen in this hive looked identical to the other one, large and a very dark body. We split the brood nest in a similar fashion to Hive#1 and removed the baggie. We did not remove any of the bottom dangling comb, though I'm beginning to wonder if we should have.

A couple observations:
1) I think both queens are doing great! Eggs were seen in both hives, and the laying patterns were nice and tight. There was a frame in each hive where the capped brood had occasional spaces. I'm assuming that is where we're had mature brood emerge.
2) House bees look extremely silly when all you can see is their rear ends above the edge of the cell wall
3) Boy oh boy does that queen know she's the queen...and so does everyone else! She moves in a totally different way than the other bees..marching across the frame with an absolute purpose to her. And everyone gets out of her way!

So there you go...first ever hive inspection. I went in with the intention of identifying Housel positioning and marking the frames appropriately, but that goal kinda slipped away in the excitement. I'm certain there will be another time for that.

Thanks for reading!
-bzzzybee

[Barbara]

You can sure tell Bzzzy is a scientist, huh?   :-D  Though it's usually stars she is describing in such detail.

My reaction to the inspection was . . .WOW!  All that pollen in all the different colors!  Totally amazing. And it was so awesome to see those little tiny eggs laying so neatly in the bottom of the cells.  I was having a hard time seeing the eggs with my veil, so I took it off, and got my nose right down there next to the frame so I could see them.  We have very gentle bees, thank goodness.

Oh and then there is the larger larvae curled up in the cells.  How cool is that??  There was honey in the outside cells surrounding the brood, just like the pictures we have seen. 

I have to agree with Bzzzy about the queen, she wasn't at all what I expected, and really easy to spot.  But she was beautiful!  Even our 14 year old daughter was excited to see the queen, and said how beautiful she is.  And silly us, we forgot the camera.   We are getting our daughter a camera for her birthday and we're going to let her be the bee photographer.  We'll see how she does.

Anyway, it was all very very exciting and I can't wait to peak in there again and see what they are all up to.

[bzzzybee]

At the risk of talking to myself, I thought I'd post an update  :)

We couldn't handle the suspense (yes, 24 hours is a LONG time in this instant gratification culture of ours) so we checked in on the bees today, to see if breaking the brood nest and removing the top space helped. Short answer: Oh my goodness!!!! The heavy hive had drawn their frame more than halfway, and the lighter hive was at about 1/3 drawn. At this rate we'll have to check them about every other day to keep them supplied with empty frames.

The other bit of news is that I did find out that the flow here in Maryland ends about June 10th and is done. We don't appear to have a fall flow. So I won't baggie feed again until about mid-June. Hopefully that will be sufficient to keep the buildup going even without the natural flow.

Thanks again for all the advice! I'll keep you posted as we poke around the hives.

- bzzzy

[Michael Bush]

Anytime you leave them room they will draw their own comb in preference to foundation.  Never leave them room.  If you have combs outside of frames, try to rubber band them into empty frames if they are large enough.

[Cindi]

Bzzzy and Barbara.  What a team!!!  That is very cool that both of your are posting here on our forum, we get both sides of the story, hee, hee.  Yep, story tellers, both of you, you are great at explaining and giving us a wonderful picture of what you are up to and the bees are doing simply marvelous!!!!  Yeah!!!  Keep those stories coming on, they are fun....beautiful and most wonderful day, Cindi