Inspecting The Hives

We have two hives in the side yard.  One of them we call the Jeff Davis hive since we caught the swarm in our backyard here in Jefferson Davis Parish.  The other hive which sits just to the north of the Jeff Davis hive, we call the Allen Parish hive since we caught that swarm out at the farm in Oberlin (Allen Parish).  For a long while we were opening up the boxes several times a week, checking out the growth and health of the colonies.  This hobby is kind of addicting.  Once it gets cold, you are not supposed to open the boxes as the bees work real hard to regulate the temperature in the hives.

The drought this summer was hard on the bees and then a few weeks ago, we had temperatures that plummeting into the low 20's.  We figured it best that we get into the hives and inspect things with a seasoned veteran of beekeeping - our friend.  Tricia invited him over and he brought his smoker and got into both boxes.  Here is what we learned:  The queen moved up vertically rather than horizontally.  That means that she filled up the foundation frames toward the center of the box, but the frames on the outside had not been filled out yet.

Both queens appear to be very strong, though, laying lots of eggs in beautiful patterns.  More on that in a minute.  With spring coming and lots of nectar and pollen soon to be available, we look for both hives to really thrive.  We'll pull honey in July, if all goes according to plan.

The queens in each box are laying lots of eggs and they are in all stages of growth.  In the photo below, the bottom center portion that looks like the sun is capped brood.  These capped brood worker bees take 6 days to hatch.  Just on this one frame, that's a lot of new babies.  The hives are about to explode with activity.  The rainbow portion above the capped brood are eggs that have been laid.  The egg stage lasts for 3 days and then it becomes a larvae.  Those cells will then be capped and will hatch out.  The upper left and right corners are capped honey.

The very bottom of the frame are some cells that are bigger than the cells in which the worker bees' eggs are laid.  These cells are drone cells.  The drones are males.  The males do two things:  They eat and they breed with the queens.  During winter time, the bees don't like the drones eating, so they kill them.  It is a brutal, woman-dominated society.  The drones fly up to the "drone zone" which is approximately 300 feet in the air and meet up with queens and get romantic.  The appearance of drone cells tell you that spring is on the way and love will be in the air.

This frame has a bit more capped honey on the top and both corners.  Honey is heavy.  

This frame is almost completely capped honey.  The comb is capped with wax.

While in both the Jeff Davis and Allen boxes, the queens in each were located.  If you look to the end of the finger, you can see one of the queens.  Here body is a little longer and redder and she has a black, shiny dot on her back.

Since the queens were located in both of the deeps, we added another deep on top to allow for growth and put a queen excluder between the second deep and the super on top of it.  That will keep the queen from going up.  The brood that hatches out of the top will mature and the bees will clean out those cells and fill the supers with honey.  (That's the plan, anyway.)

The bricks on top of the boxes tell a story.  If they are laid long ways like they are, it means that we have seen evidence of a laying queen.  In the next month, we'll be setting swarm traps in the yard AND we'll also attempt to make a split out of each box.  

What that means is you remove a frame of brood, a frame of pollen and honey and put it in another box.  The bees will immediately determine that there is not a queen in the box and will "make a queen."  Once she hatches, makes her virgin flight and is bred in the drone zone, she'll return to begin laying.  At that point the split is successful and you've taken one box of bees and turned them into two.  We can't wait to try it out.  We've successfully caught swarms, but have never made a split.  We'll report back when we try it.

It's the Bees' Knees!

We wanted to check on the progress of the honeybees that we placed in a box after catching a swarm.  Tricia put on the bee suit and I put on the veil and we went out to the box to inspect.  The bees, so far, have been very gentle.  We haven't needed to use the smoker to calm them down.  Once they have honey and lots of brood to protect, things might change.  

I want to show you some photos from our inspection of the hive.  You can see below that the bees are drawing out comb on the foundation.  Slowly, but surely, they are filling up the frame.

This next photo is very interesting as it shows several stages.  First, in many of the cells, you can see a tiny, white thing that looks like a grain of rice.  That's the egg that the queen has laid.  Right in the center of the photo, you can see three cells that have a big white "C-shaped" thing in it.  That's the larva.  Finally, you can see golden-colored capped cells.  The cells that are capped for between 8 and 14.5 days.  This is the pupal stage and at the end of this time, an adult honeybee will emerge.  Queens can lay approximately 1,500 eggs per day, so you can imagine the colony sized begins to increase quickly.  They'll all go to work filling the frames.  You don't want them to run out of space as they can swarm, so we added an additional box with frames on top to allow for growth.

Bees are SO busy.  You can understand why the term "busy as a bee" was coined.  I took a photo of a bee full of pollen as she flies into the box.

Here is a more close up photo.  Note the bright yellow pollen on the back legs of the bee.  She's been working hard to bring pollen back to the growing hive.  We know we have a laying queen as we've witnessed the eggs, larvae and capped brood, and we know the bees are bringing food into the hive.

As I slowly looked at the activity, I was looking for one other thing.

The queen.  Our colony is very small as it wasn't a large swarm.  If I'm going to ever spot the queen, it has to be now, before the growth is exponential.  I spotted her!  If you look at the bottom, right hand corner of the frame and work your way up to the left diagonally, she's the 3rd bee from the bottom.  Do you see her?

She has a longer abdomen (or tail) in comparison to the others.  It has a little red tinge to it.  She also has a more black and shiny dot on her thorax.  Now that I spotted her, I carefully put the frame back in the box and closed the top.

Long live the queen!  We'll let her get back to work.  The flow is about to start as the white dutch clover, privet and (soon) the Chinese tallow tree will be flowering.  We're not sure if we'll get to pull honey this year, but we'd certainly like to.  We're also trying to catch another swarm.  No success yet, but we've seen scout bees checking out the swarm trap.