1st Hive Inspection

Christian and I spent an hour in the apiary today.  We quietly and calmly worked through each frame out of both hives.  What were we looking for?

• First and foremost: our queen.  She looked healthy and was working a frame.
• Representatives of healthy hive activity:
• Emerging brood: in each hive we were able to spot new worker bees crawling out of their cups.
• Capped brood: larvae working to becoming a pupae.
• Larvae: eggs that have hatched to little worm looking things.
• Eggs: oh so tiny, but there sitting in royal jelly.
• We did see some practice cups for queen or drone cells.
• Honey, water and pollen cells!  This means they are working to feed themselves.

Both hives seemed to be in working order.  On the Asguard hive (red roof), I moved another empty frame to the center.  (We put an empty one in the middle of both to encourage comb building.)  This is hopes of them knowing they have some space to work on growing themselves out.

All in all, happy progress.  We removed some burr comb (Burr comb, bridge comb, and brace comb are all terms used to describe comb that is being built in places that the bees want to fill - a space greater than about 3/8” (1 cm) wide.  Bee keepers call it burr comb because it is annoying.  We remove it, store it and eventually make wax from it.

We removed their feeding buckets.  We aren't happy that they drip down a little bit.  So I will make them sugar patties with Mann Lake Bee-Pro Pollen Substitute.