Saturday, May 5, 2012

Adding 2nd Hive Body




Used a medium frame box to give room for the 1:1 sugar-water syrup feeder bag.  The bees used the extra room to make comb!  I need to make some 2 inch shims before the fall - so they won't have room to build comb.  I want them to build comb on the removable frames.


They really are good builders.  Time to see what they did with the 10 frames in the bottom hive box.

Nice comb - 100% pure beeswax !


Sure appears they're getting crowded.



Pulled out each frame - here's frame 6 in the white hive (we have 2 hives - one totally white and one with blue paint on the back - so we can tell them apart from the house).  Notice frames 1 and 2 from this hive body were moved to the box we'll put on top of the original box.  I'll put the frames back before we add the other box.

Good shot of capped and open brood.  LOOKING for the queen.  Notice white-capped honey at the top of the frame.


Zoom in on this if you can - capped brood - you can see honey and larvae in the uncapped cells.


Outside of frame 10 - good to see them drawing out comb. You sometimes have to reverse the outside frames (remove and rotate 180 degrees - then put the frame back in).  Bees tend to not like anything bigger than 1/2 to 3/8 of an inch ("bee space")  between frames.  The outside frames are about 3/4 of an inch away from the side of the box. These girls were working on both sides of the outside frames just fine.   


FOUND THE QUEEN in the white hive - can you find her?  She was on frame 5 - almost exactly in the center of the box.


There she is -  little easier-  because the breeder marked her with white paint (white for 2011 - so she is an over-wintered queen - hearty and already laying strong and steady).  Queens raised this year will be marked with a yellow marker - red next year.  Good to have the queen marked.  If we find an unmarked queen, that's one raised by the colony.  Another good pic to zoom - you can see the white larvae pretty good in some of these cells.  The worker bees add honey and then cap with wax.  The queen lays one egg in each cell - it goes from egg to larvae to pupae (spins a coccoon), and finally reaches adult stage.  About 24 days for a worker bee to emerge from a freshly laid egg.  28 days for a drone,  Future queen bees are fed royal honey, and hatch in 19 days, then fed royal jelly.


There's the queen again.  Easier to find this time. She's about 1 1/2 times the size of a worker bee.



Time to put the second full hive body on - 10 fresh frames with foundation.  The bees will draw out comb on each and use for raising brood, and storing pollen and honey.  We'll check these about every 7 days.  When we're satisfied they're full (so the bees have enough to survive the winter), we'll add medium boxes on top for OUR honey (honey supers).  Each of these boxes will also have 10 frames with fresh foundation - they SHOULD only store extra honey in these.  When we remove those boxes, the bees will live in the 2 hive bodies shown here over the winter.

All the bees on the left are from the white hive - we disturbed them, but they'll all find their way inside pretty soon.


The top board is already on - Sheila is putting on the metal-capped top cover.


On to the blue hive - we pulled each frame and checked for pollen stores, honey, brood, and of course - looking for the queen !


Lot of bees on each frame - amazing how they keep working if you move slow and steady.


On to frame 8 - still looking for the queen.  Hope we didn't miss her. That's easy to do.  There are so many bees and the nurse bees stay close to the queen - it's hard to find her sometimes.  


THERE she is !! Little easier this time?  The marking helps...


Just in case you missed her...


Here she is again.  CAREFUL with that tool -- don't want to injure the queen !! Notice the nice, newly drawn comb.  All ready for fresh eggs !


Putting on the 2nd deep hive body - 10 fresh frames with new foundation.


 
Sheila putting on the top board.  She'll add the metal top cover, and we'll get out of these bee suits !  We decided to wear gloves this time - and NOT use the smoker.  I wanted to see if the bees would be aggressive without smoke.  We're still new, and a bit clumsy, but I'd like to get to the point where we can handle the bees without gloves. 




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