May 20, 2013

crazy busy week....we had a Conference at church, A surprise birthday party

for our friend, and family in for a visit......back to normal today...

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here is the Week 2 BEE inspection.....

here is Ross using the SMOKER to calm the BEEs

we found the QUEEN....look in the middle bottom of this picture....

you can't miss her!!!

we knew that the QUEEN was busy because on this frame you can see the

baby BEEs (larva)...some have been capped and others are still open

on this frame you can see that the QUEEN has laid an EGG in each cell

(you may have to zoom in....it looks about the size of a piece of rice)

here is a diagram of the Honey Bee life cycle....every 21 days

another batch of WORKER BEEs is born

upon opening this hive for inspection, we noticed that the BEEs were

making lots of extra comb at the top of the frames....this is called PROPOLIS,

and every book we read says that it has to be removed....so I used the HIVE tool

 to pry the frames apart and then sliced off the extra comb that was on the wood part

of the frames....there was quite a bit of it this week....not sure if that is normal

or not....we will see what is there when we go next week.... 

this is the extra comb that I cut out of the hive..... there is honey and pollen in the

cells....we will keep an eye on this and see if this continues to be a problem.

Ross made another great trade and got me a golf cart, affectionately

named "BUZZIN AROUND" so it makes getting back to the BEEs

a ton easier....Mom & Brother Tim came along for the ride on Saturday.

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so.....2 weeks in this is what we have learned.....

• finding each QUEEN in the hive was exciting
• you have to wait and look at them once a week...even though I would like to check everyday....
• it is an amazingly calm thing to sit back there with them and watch them work
• the water source we made for them (a 5 gallon dog watering bowl) is working out great
• we have heard them at the tree/flower blooms by the house...which is over 300 feet away from their hive, so we know that they are moving around the property now collecting pollen

we will post more pictures this Saturday for week 3....maybe we will get a picture of

a baby bee emerging from the brood comb.

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this week (Memorial Day Weekend) is when we get the garden ready,

so we will post pictures of getting that all ready to go.

Pleasant Dreams!!!