It seemed like a good day to inspect–sunny, not too hot. Who am I kidding? It’s always too hot! (You can get quite sweaty in a bee suit.) But it seem like a good day. It had been 13 days since the last time I inspected. We were looking at #2 first.
We opened it up, hoping to see a queen. We did not. We did, however, see an open queen cell.
We hoped the virgin queen was somewhere getting ready for, or maybe going out on, her mating flight. They seemed to have a lot of nectar and pollen, so when the queen came back, she could start laying eggs.
As I removed the top box of hive #1, I noticed that it was very heavy. We looked through the bottom box first. Everything was normal. The frames were mostly emerging brood, pollen, and nectar.
The second box was nearly full! Eight out of the ten frames that were in the box were drawn out fully, with one nearly done. And they all looked beautiful! Some were full to the eaves with nectar while others were a nice round frame of brood and honey.
We saw the queen. We knew she was there before we saw her, though, because we saw eggs. We also added another box, so now we are up to three deeps!
I am sorry for writing this post so late. I have been very busy with our garden. Don’t worry; there’s something really exciting in the next inspection.
Sideling View Apiary 