Backyard Apiary

For the past few days, the hives have started to beard. This is common as the temperature increases, but I noticed that Antheia had a little beard at 8am when I was getting ready for work. A clear sign that the hive was not too hot, but short on space. I opened up the hives today to give them more space. Every box was overflowing with bees. I would pull out a frame and the bees would just pour out behind the frame. It is really cool to look down between some of the frames and see a row of hundreds of little faces staring back at me.

Antheia had a single capped queen cell at the bottom corner of a frame and many empty swarm cells. Oddly, there were a few frames of nothing but capped drone cells. There was some uncapped brood, so she is still laying or at least was laying a few days ago. I can’t see eggs through the veil. Perhaps she didn’t have much space and laid the drones in honey cells. At least all the other hives in the surrounding area will get the chance to gain some good local genetics.

The queen did something odd. She jumped out of the hive. I saw her large dark body crawling around on the ground in front of the hive. I picked her up with the hive tool and put her on the top of the frames. I had to encourage her to stay in the hive by blocking her attempts to escape. She eventually went between the frames instead of off the edge. Hegemone’s queen was in the top box between 2 frames that were combed together. She contrasts her sister queen with a golden body. The hive had a good amount of capped drone, honey and pollen.

All frames in both of the hives were drawn. As I shifted frames of brood and honey up to the new super, I put a foundationless frame in its place. In less than 5 minutes, I noticed the bees festooning on one of the new frames I added. I will be surprised if they have many undrawn frames before the flow.

I’ve been using my droid to record inspections. It has turned out to be a very effective hands free way of keeping track of what I see. I am looking in to an easy way of posting the audio clips in case anyone cares to listen.