Bee Check

Checked the bees today.  They were calmer than last time.  What we did this time to check our bees, was we worked our hives backwards.  I found eggs, larvae, and capped brood.  I gave them a gallon of sugar syrup afterwards.

Hive

Checked my hives today.  Yesterday my mom found a picture of a bee that had k-wing and it looked a lot like my queen's wings, which is normally signs of either Nosema or tracheal mites, but my hives didn't show any other signs.   So we went to Harvard's and asked him what his opinion was.  He said if the queen is doing fine and she was laying to just leave her alone, because if we treat the hive we'd probably do more harm than good.  So we did exactly that.  My queens are doing fine.  I found a lot of eggs, but I only found one queen.  I wasn't particularly worried though because I found a lot of eggs and larvae.  We transferred the bees in my nuke to my orange hive.  We also gave my orange hive a gallon of sugar syrup.  After I finished with my hive, I helped my little brother with his hive.  We didn't find his queen,but we found a lot of eggs, so we weren't really worried, well I wasn't,but Matthew was.

My Nuke!!!

So remember how I split my first hive?  It worked, and I now have grown my own queen who is laying eggs. My mother and I found eggs (well okay my mom found the eggs first) and then we went looking for my queen.  Then we found her, and she is a pretty queen.

This is the queen from the nuke.

Hive Check

So I checked my hive today.  I didn't give them any sugar syrup so I could possibly maybe get some honey this fall because of the blackberry nectar flow.  I couldn't find the queen, but I found a lot of eggs so I'm not really worried.  They were making a lot of swarm cells though.  I'll have to keep an eye on my hive.  I'm going to put another super on my hive tonight.

Parent's Swarm Update

So remember how we got the bees into the box?  They swarmed again.  Into yet another inconvenient place...  Our neighbor's backyard...

Parent's Hive Update

So my parent's hive swarmed today.  Their hive swarmed to the most inconvenient spot ever.  The fence where all the grass is.  We had to go out twice to try to put the swarm in a deep.  The first time I went out to try to put the bees in the deep I forgot to change my shorts for pants.  So Mom had to duct tape my legs to make sure no bees could go into my boots or up my pants.  It was painful to take off.  We finally got them to go into the deep.  I hope they stay there.

Putting Syrup Out For My Nuke

Well the title says it all... I put a half gallon mason jar of sugar syrup out for the nuke.

Hive Check

     So today I checked the hives today.  My bees were not the happiest bees.  I got stung twice.  I found my pretty queen.  They had eaten all of their pollen patties, and they drank all of their sugar syrup.  I gave them a gallon more of sugar syrup.  I did not however put another pollen patty in the hive.  I found lots of eggs, larvae, and capped brood.  I also found a frame with four swarm cells on it.  I decided to split my hives.  I took a few frames out of my hive, and I stole a frame of honey from my parent's hive.  So we'll just have to wait and see how that turns out.

My hive split.  I got the nuke from one of my mentors.

Checked the Hive

Checked the hive's sugar syrup today.  It was overcast today.  I gave them a gallon of sugar syrup today.  I also briefly checked a couple of frames.  My queen has been a good queen.  The frames that I pulled out were covered in capped brood and eggs.  Covered.  We also filled up the water source so that they wont bother the neighbors and their pools.

Special Apiary Day

Today was a very special apiary day.  We had to check a couple of hives to make sure that the queens were being accepted into the colonies correctly.

Cinco de Mayo

Happy Cinco de Mayo everybody!!

Third Hive Check

I checked my hive today.  My bees are very happy bees today.

They drank the half-gallon of sugar-syrup I gave them last week.  So I gave them a gallon more.  They didn't eat much of the pollen patty because of the beautiful weather making flowers bloom.  So I just left the pollen patty in there.  I also removed the hive entrance reducer.

I found lots of pretty capped brood, lots of eggs, and lots of larvae.  I also found my pretty queen.  She was in the bottom box towards the middle.  My parents finally found their queen, but she's not as pretty as my queen.  In the second deep that I added last week they drew out almost all the comb in that box, so that's good.

Looked at my pretty capped brood.  Notice the white honey on the edges.

I found a bug.

When we were just getting ready to get into our hives and Mom was just getting ready to put on her veil when she screamed and dropped the veil.  My Dad and I asked her what was wrong she said that she was going to pretend that the spider wasn't in her veil yesterday while we were at our club's apiary.  It probably was in her veil yesterday though.  It was a really big spider.

Our Club's Apiary Day

Me at our club's apiary.  I learned more than I have in a while.

Second Hive Check

Opened the hive.  My bees were very happy today.  They ate most of their pollen patty.

My bees drank a gallon of sugar water (the whole thing), but we only gave them half a gallon of sugar syrup because we only brought a gallon of sugar syrup and my parent's hive needs sugar syrup too.  I will take more out to them in a couple of days.

Look at all the pretty capped brood in my hive.

I found my queen today, unlike last weekend. If you can't find the queen let me give you a hint:  She's right there.  If you still can't see her click on the picture to make it bigger.  She is also bigger than the others and is a different color.

There was some burr comb, but not as much as in my parent's hive.  They had five supersedure cells in their hive.  I didn't have any supersedure cells in my hive because my bees like me.  My mother says that's because they haven't met me yet.

I had to put on another box so that my bees have more space to put brood and honey,  but mostly brood.  We pyramided to make sure that the bees don't just stay in the bottom of the hive.  And yes, I do understand that my top bee box isn't painted.  The reason that is is because I forgot to paint it, even though mom has been telling me I need to paint my bee boxes for a while now.

My hive being closed up after it's all said and done.
Unlike what my mother's blog says I only hip checked my father to the side once.

Bee pokemon.

Bee Pokemon.

First Hive Check

Checked the hives today.

My bees were fairly relaxed when I opened my hive.

I found some excess burr comb.

The queen cage was empty when we looked at it.  I did not find my queen though.

I found lots of larvae and eggs.  I stopped looking for the queen because the temperature was dropping and I didn't want to chill the brood.  I added half a gallon of sugar syrup and half a pollen patty to the hive before I closed it up.

After finishing my hive, my parents said that I butted in and took over doing their hive, or so they say.

Even though I did not find my queen, I found my parent's queen.

After that I took over installing my parent's other colony that they planned to install today.

The gentle way of installing bees because the temperature and the weather was turning for the worst.

Installing the Package

Getting hive assembled.

Getting hive ready for bees and feeder.

Matthew puts feeder in my hive.  Good weather so far.

 

Getting all the bees off of the queen cage.

Installed the package today.  The bees don't like being put in the hive on a rainy day.  The weather wouldn't make up it's mind.  First it was all sunny, then as soon as we got the equipment out and ready to assemble the hive and put them together really quick, it started hailing.  So we sent Matthew back to the house to get the big umbrella and we just kept going.  And get this as soon as we finished installing both my mother's and mine bees and were going back to the house the weather started to get better.

Picking up the Package

Picked up the bees today.  We got the package because Franclyn said that there was one package that broke and so the excess bees just flew onto other boxes.  And she said that the box with the most bees on the outside probably had the best queen because of pheromones.

Building Bee Equipment