Well, we inspected Hive #1 today because we were concerned about swarming. We found a few queen cells cups, but also plenty of empty cells for the queen to keep laying. I don’t think the colony is at risk of swarming. It does, however, seem to be overrun by drones. This frame containing both capped worker brood and drone brood was one of the better looking frames — because it wasn’t filled entirely with drones:
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I inspected both of our hives today, but didn’t have my regular cracker jack film crew along. No video. No photos. But you can pretend I saw something similar to this:
Here’s a 60-second clip of the bees scenting after I inspected and slightly moved their hive yesterday (First Hive Inspection of the Year). They’re also bringing in loads of colourful pollen.
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See my other video about the Nasonov gland for more info.
It was warm enough in our backyard to inspect Hive #2 today, the first inspection for that hive this year. I had to do it alone again, so it looks a lot like the last inspection (maybe not a whole lot to see here). I pulled the frames from the brood boxes and moved them into new boxes, and I moved the hive about six inches to the left (enough to slightly disorient many of the foragers, which I’ll show in the next post). I also found some mould on the last frame in the bottom box thinking it was wax moth, but it was probably just mould from water seeping into the hive over the winter. The bees were not at all defensive. They were crawling all over me, but I didn’t see any trying to sting me. I misted the bees with sugar water at one point only to make sure they stayed put, though I think I would have been fine without it.
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THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ORIGINALLY POSTED.
I did a full inspection of Hive #1 today, the first inspection of the year. I also moved the hive to a new location a couple feet away, further from a small walkway that cut too much into the bees’ flightpath.
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That’s the hive on the left and the new location on the right. I didn’t use a smoker or a sugar spray bottle. The bees were disoriented but calm. It’s possible I could have done without my veil or gloves. But I’m not that lovey-dovey with the bees just yet. I’ll explain everything after the video.
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This is the first video we’ve posted that shows what it’s like to pull out frames full of bees — the real beekeeping deal for anyone who’s curious to see what it’s actually like. It’s a short video of our recent full inspection of Hive #1, showing off some natural foundationless honeycomb the bees built from scratch in 13 days.
THE 480p HIGHER DEFINITION SETTING MAY PROVIDE SMOOTHER PLAYBACK.
We included four foundationless frames in the hive when we added a second brood box. Two of the foundationless frames were fully-drawn and filled with honey and brood within 13 days. One frame was more than half-filled. The fourth frame, on the outer edge of the box, showed the beginning of some natural comb. Not bad.
Thirteen days ago, we added a second brood box to one of our young honey bee hives and included four foundationless frames as an experiment in backwards beekeeping. Six days later, we took a quick peek at one of those foundationless frames and found this:
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Today, we took another look at that same foundationless frame — and look at it now:
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But that’s nothing. Check this out:
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THE FOLLOWING AS BEEN UPDATED SINCE IT WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED.
Another long post packed with photos…
We added a second brood chamber (or deep body or brood box) to Hive #1 yesterday. As far as I can tell, it went well. The bees were extremely calm being misted with sugar water, way less agitated than when we’ve used the smoker on them. All the frames had drawn out comb except one. We put about half the drawn frames in the new box on top with empty foundation frames between them. We installed 4 foundationless frames in the original box, placing them between drawn out frames. The honey and the brood seemed mixed together on the frames, so there were no all-brood frames or all-honey frames. There was brood in just about every frame we inspected. We saw some honeycomb hanging off the bottom of one frame, but no swarm cells. Hive #1 appears to be doing great. We’ll see how the colony adjusts to the new box and having all their drawn out frames spaced out. The big experiment is the foundationless frames in the bottom box.
Here’s a shot of the bees after we removed a few frames from the hive:
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I’ll upload some video of the procedure soon. (UPDATE: The video is posted.) Until then, allow me to present a big load of photos and descriptions of what we did. (The full series of photos can be view on my Picasa page.)
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Here’s the video of the non-intrusive hive inspection I did earlier today, recorded on my new fancy pants high definition camera. (Change the settings from 720p to a lower resolution if the video doesn’t load or play back seamlessly for you.)
Related post: Non-intrusive Hive Inspection.
UPDATE (Jan. 24/11): The honey comb under the inner cover is called burr comb, and the bees built the burr comb because I had the inner cover on upside-down. Whenever there is more than about 1cm of space in the hive (called “bee space”), the bees will try to fill it in with comb. The upside-down inner cover provided too much open space.
I did a non-intrusive hive inspection this afternoon. I’ve been on a tiring film shoot for the past four days, and I missed hanging out in the backyard watching the bees, surrounded by all my veggies and things. I’m glad I had the day off. Here’s a shot of some bees in Hive #2.
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By non-intrusive, all I mean is I didn’t pull out the frames. I just removed the roof and the inner cover and looked down at the frames. The bees in Hive #1 have built more comb than those in Hive #2, probably because they went at least one extra week with a feeder. (No doubt about it, feeding the bees at this early stage accelerates comb building — more places for the queen to lay her eggs.) I scraped more honeycomb from the inner cover of that hive. I plan to use the wax (I already ate the honey) to build some starter strips. From what I could see today, the bees in Hive #1 have drawn out comb on at least 7 of the 10 frames, maybe more. I was impressed with what I saw. I’m not sure when I should add another brood box to the hive, but I’m thinking as early as next weekend, the weekend after that at the latest.
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