Bee Inspection

 

We checked on our bees for the first time this week.  They have been very busy.  They had drawn comb on all but one side of one frame.  There was a nice mix of brood, pollen, and honey.  Luckily neither of us got stung even though they were very active (probably due to the late hour of our inspection).  We have a few sugar ants coming in the hive so we will have to watch that closely.  We changed the entrance reducer to the larger entry and the bees took a little while to realize where the entrance was because they were used to going to the right side and the entry was changed to the left of the hive.

 

Bee Productive

We stole a little honey from our busy bees today. They decided to build comb onto the inside of the cover and it had to be scraped off so we got a tasty snack. Otherwise the hive looked really good, no queen cells, no signs of hive beetles or wax moths, and lots and lots of brood.

We added a medium super to the hive since there was only 1 1/2 frames not drawn out. We also changed the entrance reducer because it only had the inch opening and there was too much activity for that.

Yummy Yummy breakfast! Frosted maple mini wheats, whole grain "raisin bran" imitation, Chobani vanilla yogurt, chia seeds, sunflower seeds, carob chips, and a little sunflower seed butter. I love to have variety in every bite!

I also love my fiesta dishware! I also made my longest trek here, I walked 2.5 miles out and ran almost all of it back for a total of 5 miles. Averaged 12mph. AWESOME!

The Newbees

Clay repopulated our hive yesterday with a new set of bees. Our last hive got overrun by wax moths last year and we lost the colony. My job this morning after getting home from work was to remove the screen box they came in and place the feeder on top. They had already made themselves at home in their new hive although there were some stragglers left in the screen box.

They were all in a tizzy, especially once I opened the bag of sugar water and poured it into the feeder. I am just tickled pink that I didn't get stung. I had all my gear on of course but I remembered a very important step...I placed hair rubber bands around the ankles of my jeans to avoid a repeat of the up-the-pants stinging that happened last year. = )