Newest Queen

We checked on the bees from the bee removal that we did in town and found a big gorgeous queen with a terrific laying pattern.   It's a small but productive and happy hive so far.    Plus, they were nice and calm. 

Here's a pic of a frame of brood with the queen on it.   You can see capped brood and older larvae that are almost ready to be capped.   The queen is out in the open, easily visible.   Can you see her?  Click the pic to biggify it.

New Queen Check

So, you know we had our share of problems with the flower lang hive.

Good. Gravy.

Drama, drama, drama. 

At our last inspection, things looked good in that hive - good laying pattern, calm bees.

And then we put the top box on the bottom box and the bees started roaring.

Roaring is not good.

I feared we killed the queen.    And a couple of days after that, I read Linda's blog, where the same thing happened to her and indeed the queen was dead when next she looked.

Crap.

So I decided not to panic.   [You guys from Beemaster will be so proud of me.]

And we did nothing.  [When in doubt - do NOTHING]

And we waited two weeks for another inspection figuring that if she were really gone, then the bees would make a new one and we'd see ripe queen cells when next we checked.

And when we checked, we found this.  

Beautiful brood comb.  Lots of larvae.

And the queen!

I'm so relieved!

These guys have started taking more syrup and I'm hoping that they'll have a good boom now just before the goldenrod blooms.

We have acres and acres of goldenrod and bees love it, so we might actually get a super of honey this year.   Fingers crossed.

Flower Lang Update

You might remember that we had a bit of trouble with the queen in our Flower Lang hive and we had to replace her.  

We checked on things again on July 1st and were very pleased to see this frame of capped brood.  

The brood is the stuff under the tan caps.  This is larvae that has been sealed up to metamorphose from a grub into an adult.   You can also see capped honey around the top edge of the frame.    The laying pattern of the capped brood shows a great laying pattern.  This queen is a good queen.    [We never did see her during the inspection.  Perhaps she hides as well as she lays.]

We also found this frame of honey.

The whitish stuff in the middle is capped honey.   Honey has a lower water content than the air, so the bees cap it off to prevent it from pulling moisture out of the air.   Honey's low water content is one of the things that makes it antibiotic and keeps it from spoiling.   Cool, huh!

The two rubber bands on the frame on the right side were used to keep some broken comb in the frame.  The bees built the broken stuff back into the frame and added on.   When they're tired of the rubber bands, they'll chew them off.

This honey probably has a lot of our sugar water in it.   This hive doesn't take nearly as much sugar water as the other one does, only a quart every 6-7 days, but it's still pretty likely that a lot of this honey came from the feeder and not the local flora.    It's a small hive.

TARDIS - Day 26: Capped brood.

Just to remind you, we took Lily with us this time to take the pics while we inspected the hives.    It was great to have Lily there to do the camera thing so we could focus on the bees.    Thank you, Lily!

I am happy to report that there was only one little bit of burr comb on this hive and we decided to leave it.   The bees are going to do what the bees are going to do.   We'll make sure it stays straight on the frames, but those little bump outs are not worth messing the comb for.

Unless someone with a lot more experience tells me otherwise.    Then I'll happily reconsider.

This week, this hive was all about capped brood.

Glorious, glorious capped brood.

We could see where the first batch of new bees has hatched out and new eggs have been laid in those cells.    This is great news.   Our blackberries have started blooming and the more bees there are, the better.  This is one of our best nectar flows of the year.    Acres and acres of blackberries.

Hopefully there will be enough new bees fast enough to store a lot up for the winter.  We'll see.

Here's a closer look at what's going on in the frames.    Blow it up for a good look.

The larvae are large and white and curled around in the cell.

The honey is shiny.   The capped honey has a smooth cap - different from the bumpy caps on the capped brood.

If you look closely you can see that the brood is capped with mini hexagons.  [It's easier to see in the second pic at the top]

When we pulled apart some of the frames, the bees festooned in three places.   It doesn't happen all the time and I'm always intrigued when it happens.   I need to find out why they do that.

The very last frame was one we had repaired last week.  The bees are doing their best to join it.

Almost there.  Only a bee width away from joining.

And here's the queen.   It was very cooperative of her to stand right next to that other bee so you can see the difference in appearance. 

We named her Liz X.   You Doctor Who fans can explain why.   

[We need a star whale hive....]