My fabulous fiance and I have been in the hive several times since the last post.  They were quick trips to see how things were generally going.  To see if the hive required another super, to show fiance’s son the bees, etc.

Last week, Alan and I opened the hive for an in-depth exam.  We were startled to find the hive mostly full of uncapped honey- top and bottom deep supers.  There was significantly less brood than we had seen previously.  This was not a scenario I had read about.

We ran inside, after closing everything up, and got on the various reputable bee-keeping forums to see what was going on.  

No evidence of multiple eggs per cell anywhere and there were very few drone cells (which tend to be obviously larger than other cells) and very few drones, so no laying worker bees.  See, if the queen is ailing, or if she dies/disappears, a worker bee may take up laying eggs in the hive.  While queens can lay either drones or worker bees, worker bees can only lay drones.  Because drones don’t contribute to the hive, they just exhaust hive resources, the hive is at risk of dying.

Anyway, where there were eggs, there was only one egg per cell- so the queen was somewhere, alive in the hive.  

There had been a lot of burr comb, comb which appears between supers or frames… basically anywhere where it isn’t supposed to (you scrape it off during examinations).  Unlike other burr comb we’d come across, this comb contained brood and was hanging off the bottom of the frames of the top super.

This was cause for concern.  See, if queen cells appear on the bottom of a frame, it signifies possible swarming of the hive.  Large amounts of uncapped honey also signifies possible swarming (the bees like easy access to honey in order to gorge before the swarm).

Anyway, the cells were full of drone brood (I dissected them back in the house), not queens.  That was a good sign.  Also, it had been a particularly rainy week… and bees like to uncap honey so that they have a food source because they are unable to forage.

So no swarming imminent.  

Just to be on the safe side, we decided to check back in a week to make sure that the queen was still producing.

We also decided a great opportunity to start keeping good records.

Both in the last trip and in this one, I went without gloves.  It is much easier to handle the frames.  Also, the bees are so timid that there isn’t really any danger.

Also, I picked up this neat piece of gear: the jacket.  Firstly, it isn’t nearly as cumbersome as a full suit.  Also the netting around the head is attached to the jacket.  It sits like a hoodie until you want to flip up the mask.  You zip it around… and there is nothing to think about.  Fabulous.

It was hilarious.  As I labelled the frames, I had to fight the bees.  They crawled all over my hands and I had to push them around with the marker.  

Here is the straight data:

I. Top Super

1a.  1/3 Uncapped Honey

1b.  No progress

2a.  1/2 Capped Honey, 1/4 Uncapped Honey, 1/4 eggs

2b.  Full capped brood

3a.  1/4 Capped Honey, 1/5 Capped brood

3b.  1/5 Capped Honey, Otherwise Capped brood/eggs

4a.  Top-capped honey, sides-uncapped honey, otherwise eggs and uncapped brood

4b.  Top 1/2-capped honey, 1/3 uncapped honey, capped brood, no eggs

5a.  All uncapped honey

5b.  1/2 capped honey, 1/2 uncapped honey

6a.  1/4 uncapped honey

6b.  All uncapped honey

7a.  1/3 uncapped honey

7b.  nada

8a.  nada

8b.  nada

9a.  nada

9b.  nada

10a. nada

10b. nada

II.  Bottom Super

1a.  eggs, uncapped brood

1b.  pollen,  uncapped brood

2a.  nada

2b.  large, weird cells… looks like supersedure cells  (PICTURE)

3a.  capped brood, larvae  (PICTURE)

3b.  capped brood

4a.  capped brood, larvae, eggs

4b.  capped brood, larvae at all stages

5a.  larvae, eggs, honey on sides

5b.  larvae

6a.  capped brood, larvae

6b.  capped brood, larvae

7a.  1/10 capped honey, eggs everywhere

7b.  1/10 open honey 

8a.  larvae, 3/5 capped brood

8b.  larvae, 1/10 uncapped honey

9a.  eggs, 1/2 comb drawn

9b.  uncapped brood, eggs

10a. capped brood, pollen

10b. capped brood and larvae (full)

Anyway, it looks like we should be able to add a honey super and a queen excluder in the next two weeks.

The end.

After the third week, the bees had made all sorts of progress.  

Because the purpose of this blog is to serve as a tracking device for my hive… I’m just going to post some pictures from this check-up, then I will zoom into present day.

So LOTS of capped brood.  The darker colored caps signify nearly ripe bees.  In some pictures, you can actually see bees breaking through the caps.

The white caps at the top of this frame is capped honey.

As you can see by my ridiculous outfit, I decided to go no-suit this trip.  The books say that the suit and gloves aren’t really necessary until honey harvest time.

It was really hot… so it made sense to ditch the suit.  There was no way I was going to do it without gloves.

The dark spots are little cells full of pollen.  Neato.

In this picture, you can actually see little white uncapped brood.  

That is all.  And now:  the present day.

Depending on the bee book you look at, they tell you to wait one or two weeks before checking on your bees after installation (both books say that if you bother your bees too soon, they turn on the queen and “ball” her to death.

Balling literally means that bees in the hive create a ball around the queen with their bodies and cook her to death with their body heat.

Brutal.

I took my chances and checked them after the first week… hoping to not inspire bee mutiny.

Again, I dressed up with suit, veil, and gloves… though unnecessary.

Here, you can see all three of the feeders I left for the bees:

1) bag feeder

2) their feeder can from the package they came in

3) frame feeder

In all, they had consumed about a gallon in syrup.  Pretty impressive.

When peering into the body I could see that they had already begun to draw out comb.  

When reading up, I kept seeing the word “adorable” tossed around to describe the bees.  I didn’t really think of bees, or any insects, as having the capability to be adorable.  

But standing over the hive after the first week with the bees all settled in and hard at work:  the bees were adorable.  Freaking adorable.

They had drawn out at least some comb on five of the eight frames inside… and there were eggs everywhere- queen bee had been working very hard.

One last spray to content the ladies…

Then outside!  

Carefully prying off the top of the box…

Realizing that there were a lot of bees on the other side of the lid, I donned the veil, gloves, and rest of the suit.

As I removed the lid, I saw a lot of sticky, tired bees.  I shook the bees to the bottom of the box and they stayed there, gesturing with their tiny black legs.

Here is the queen box from the inside of the package.  You can see the candy in the top of the box, the substantial queen (in the middle), and her attendants.  The candy plugs the box so that the bees in the hive have to work through it in order to get to her… giving the bees time to familiarize themselves with her.

After spacing out her box placement between the frames, and placing her within the hive, I removed the lid and began the not-so-delicate process of dumping the bees out of the package.

They came out of the package in sticky clumps.  

When the box was nearly empty I set it aside and sprayed the bees one more time.

Then placed the last few frames.

… the second hive body to hold the bag feeder (in addition to the frame feeder that was already inside)…

(Note that my fiance is standing only 10 feet away.)

… then all done!

I placed the package next to the hive so that the other bees could make their way out.

The whole thing was so… easy.  The were way too busy being sticky and tired to do anything sinister.

My fiance and roommate Sara, who were not in protective clothing, were only ten feet away the whole time.  No stings.  In fact, I could have probably gone out without anything but a veil and been perfectly fine.  

One of the fastest things to become apparent in this process is the ease with which “bee” puns come to beekeepers.  

I know, I know- it isn’t exactly BEE-coming, is it?

…

I’m sorry.

I called off work the day we were to pick up the bees.  We left at the crack of dawn.  We stopped at the closest Walmart to the pick-up to purchase sugar, water, and spray bottles.  

We rolled up.  I was giddy… running three steps ahead of Alan all the way.  

The old guy running the show was on his phone in the door of his truck.  The bee boxes were labeled four and three pounds, with names written on paper taped to them.  Each box had its own unholy dark, shifting mass hanging from its roof.  We had been talked into a four pound box a few days before we arrived because it was late in the season.  

The evil stalactites in the four pound boxes seemed so much more menacing than those in the three pound boxes.

We flagged down the little kid that was running around… told him who we were.  He shrugged, walked over to a box with our name on it, and picked it up by one of its corners and slugged it over to the old dude to sign out.  

I carried it back by the corner to the Rabbit where we sprayed down the screened sides of the boxes.  The stalactites dissolved; the bees spread out over the screens with their little black feet and tongues sticking through.

They stopped buzzing.  We tied them into the back of the car with some cables (we had meant to buy twine) so that they wouldn’t get knocked around.  On the way home, we stopped when the buzzing got too menacing to spray down the box again.

Once at home, we hid the little box underneath the Ikea table stand for our refrigerator, behind our Sun King empty box… waiting for installation.

As soon as the bees were placed somewhere cool in the house, we started work on the last minute prep items.

We actually had a lot of last minute prep to do.  Though the hive bodies were painted

and the frames prepared

we still needed to make the syrup and set up the hive.

We thought the feeder fit two gallons… so we added way too much water.

Ten pounds of sugar from Buds:

Once the syrup was cooling, I took some Benadryl.  See, I had had some pretty bad sting reactions as a kid… but nothing like a deadly reaction.  I just wanted to be safe.

Then outside to place paving stones for the hive:

Then some last minute studying… then I donned the beesuit.

I didn’t even think of having bees until my second senior year of college.  My midterm design project had been on bees, on life in side the hive.  The idea wasn’t terrible… the project had just been poorly executed.

The review was bad like I knew it would be- I was expecting that.  What I wasn’t expecting was that one of my classmates had actually kept bees.  She was nostalgic.  She fawned.  

Then, a few months ago, I heard that a coworker had two hives.  I asked him about it.  He gave me a binder and a few links to various suppliers and online resources.

Within weeks, I put in an order for everything I would need.  I bought a few books and read obsessively.  I then hunted down a bee source (difficult to do in the Spring) and put in an order for a box of bees.