My second check

I wasn't as prepared as I would have like to have been.  I now have a smoker, hive tool, brush and so forth but I still need to borrow a bee suit.  I'm too cheap to buy one from a local bee store, and too cheap/nervous to order one online.  Again I'm grateful for Susan's help getting me started.  Hopefully I can pay it forward to a friend who would like to start backyard beekeeping.


We checked the hive for eggs and found plenty.  We checked for comb production which is surprisingly good.  Because the hive was crowded last time we checked, we not only moved the bees into my boxes, we added another hive body to give the bees the space for honey reserves to make it through the winter. They built comb on about 7 frames so we decided to add my first medium super.  So any honey they build in that super is surplus, meaning honey for me.  My hive seems to be very good comb builders which is a good sign of a healthy hive.

I am going to practice with my smoker (it went out about 1/4 of the way through)

Sting count still 0

Moving the Bees

I had been dying to get inside the hive and check on the bees.  As I do not yet have all the tools necessary for a hive check I still needed the help from Susan Oveson.  And lets be honest, I really wanted it.  I often tell people that you don't really know how to do something until you do it.  Even if you memorize the basketball rule book, study technique and great players, you can't be a great player without ever picking up the ball.  I think this applies to everything in life. So I finally get my first practice.

I'm kicking myself for not taking pictures for the blog but then again I'm glad I could focus on the task. So I will include some pictures from the internet that are not my own that show what I saw. I think I need to get Brooke a bee suit so she can take pictures.


The reason you check the hive is to make sure you have a queen that she's healthy and that the rest of your hive is healthy and doing what they are supposed to do. We also clean up burr comb, which is comb that is being created where it shouldn't be created. You don't have to find the queen to know you still have a healthy one (although finding her is a fun bonus.)  Even without seeing her you can know she's healthy by finding eggs. If there are eggs your queen is alive within the last couple of days.






With the hive being new it's important that the workers are busy making comb.  Comb is where eggs are laid and where water nectar and honey are stored.

We looked inside and found that all is well with exception of space.  We could tell the bees were feeling a little crowded because they've started to make queen cells. I imagine the collective hive as 1 organism and the hive making queen cells is how the hive reproduces.  A hive creates a new queen and then bees move with her to a new home (swarming).  This is actually how I got my hive.  Susan's sister's hive swarmed and my hive is the result of them capturing that swarm and relocating it into a bee box.  This brings us to our next objective, moving the frames inside Susan's sister's box into my box.

There are 10 frames inside each box and most of them have comb on them and of course they are covered in bees.  Instead of replacing the frames as we checked each frame for eggs, the queen, comb creation etc.  we moved the frames into my box. 




We were able to find the queen.









But my favorite part of the check was watching a new worker bee emerge from a cell. We watcher her eat through her capped cell and pull herself out. It was witnessing a miracle.
















After my first practice I am even more interested in bee keeping than I was before.  I can't wait until my next check.

Sting count 0

Starting a New Adventure.

I have become a beekeeper. And wouldn't it be fun to document the adventure right from the start? First I promise to refrain from bee puns. Second, my posts will be brief because no one likes reading a long blog.
My bee adventure actually started along time ago with the love of peanut butter sandwiches. But there were some larger contributors to my interest in apiculture.

Terry from Eagle Pass Texas who showed me how gentile honey bees are and that just having them around can be calming. He went from a loud rough backwoods Louisiana bastard (his words) to a gentile giant as he let honey bees crawl on and eat sugar from his hands.

A TV program about how mankind could be destroyed.. asteroids, the sun changing, zombies etc. One of the ways that a large part of humans would die is without our friends, the honey bees. It also mentioned the decrease of colonies around the world.

Becoming a homeowner a few years ago and seeing my cherry tree produce 12 cherries. Granted the tree is a little unhealthy, hadn't been watered for years, and it wasn't a good year for cherries but I also noticed a lack of bees around the yard and knew that contributed as well.

Susan Oveson introduced me to her "girls" and pushed me over the top. I wanted to keep bees. I was going to start next year, collect my gear as I could afford it, and start my first colony in the spring but Susan threw me into it much sooner when she told me she had a hive she could give me but needed to know if I wanted it.. that day.

I now have a colony in the backyard.
My next adventure will be transplanting the frames of brood honey and bees from Susan's bee box into my box which came yesterday.

Here are the hive bodies.  These 2 bodies will be where the queen resides. The brood (egg, larva, pupa) will be raised in these boxes along with the honey the bees will need to make it through the winter.  

The supers will be placed on top of the hive bodies when the bees are ready to create excess honey. A queen excluder keeps the queen down in the hive bodies so that she cannot fill the comb in the supers with brood. The workers are the only ones that can get into these boxes meaning they only leave honey!

The frames hang down into the boxes and provide the foundation for building comb.