Inspection 8/30/20

We inspected the short hive first. (I think I will call it that from now on; it’s easier to remember.) They had a lot of bees getting ready for the goldenrod nectar flow. We noticed many cells of pollen in the hive.

Bright orange pollen.

We did not see the queen, but we did see eggs and brood. We closed up the hive by placing one of my new burlap inner covers on top to prevent the bees from propolizing the quilt box to the frames.

We removed the propolis trap from the big hive and dug in. We looked through all the boxes but not through all the frames in each box.

There were eggs, brood, and some nice, fresh drawn comb.

It is also always nice to see the beauty of bees festooning.

Beautiful festooning.

The bees had done a bit more chewing. We closed up the hive and took the propolis trap inside to the freezer.

Mmm, balsa wood.

Inspection 8/10/20

It was a sunny day, nice for an inspection. It had been fifteen days since the last. Little did we know what would happen today.

We opened hive #2 first. They still did not have as many bees, but they did have a lot of capped and emerging brood. It was a good sign, because the bees would be ready to harvest the goldenrod flow in early September.

Beautiful brood!
Right in the middle is the little emerging head.

We also saw the queen.

She sure was busy.

On to hive #1. We decided that we would only look in the top two boxes so as not to disturb the bees as much. As I took off the lid, I decided that we were going to cut down the combs that were drawn out too thick. We sent my brother for a cookie sheet and a bread knife while we continued the inspection.

They had several frames of honey and a few frames of brood with honey on the top. There also was a frame that had a queen cup.

Luckily, it was uninhabited.

Our helper got back with the knife and tray, so we started on the first frame. First we shook/brushed the bees off. Next we cut off the thick part and honey ran down the comb. We replaced the frame. Whew, on to the next.

Thick comb #2

Then as I was picking up the next frame, DISASTER! I dropped it! It hit the ground and out broke the comb. We managed to pull the comb (and adhering bees) onto the cookie sheet. We shut up the hive and took the sheet inside to harvest what we could.

Whoops!

I have uploaded a video to my YouTube channel that show the aftermath of this disaster. I will embed it below. Sorry about the video quality; I am still learning how to do this.

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started