Fourth of July here has come and gone, and you know what that means around here? Temperatures are soaring! In the upper 90’s (that’s over 35 C for my family and friends back home), and we haven’t had much, if any rain for almost 2 weeks. The garden is wilting, the dog doesn’t want to spend much time out in the yard, and even the bees are feeling the heat. While they can “air condition” their hive by using evaporative
I hope all my Canadian friends and family had a great Canada Day yesterday! Imagine my surprise when I got home last night and saw the girls were proudly flying the maple leaf! And I was told these were Italian bees đ Guess they take after their beekeepers! Will have to see if they fly the Stars and Stripes on the Fourth!
Finally after almost 2 months, we caught a glimpse of our shy queen, Queen Elsa last night! Queen Elsa is noticeably skinnier than Beeyonce, and her abdomen appears more dark brown than golden brown. As Elsa is in the weaker hive, we think she may not be mated as well…which would explain the non-distended belly. What do you think? Long live the Queens! E
As the hives grow and things start happening, I’m really glad we started off on the right foot and have been taking good notes. Well…let me rephrase that, Rob is the note-taker while I dictate what I’m observing as I inspect each frame. This joint team effort is really paying off as you can see: Here, he’s recorded a frame-by-frame (“F1, F2” etc) description of brood pattern (whether it’s eggs, larvae, capped, or not), and how much pollen and nectar
There’s a saying in the beekeeping world: Ask 10 beekeepers a question and you will get at least 11 different answers…let me add to that and say: Post a simple question in an online beekeeping forum and you will get as many different answers as responses, AND start an argument over global warming, overuse of plastics in our throw-away-society, and rainforest deforestation! It’s amazing how a thread can be hijacked so quickly lol. In the end, I did get some
Because why else would they be building comb like this: And this: These are frames from the second hive body on Hive 2 (the strong one). Why would they all of a sudden start building wonky comb, when previously they were drawing nice bee keeper-friendly comb within the frame foundations? This is burr comb, or in this case, bridge comb, because it is comb drawn perpendicular to the frames, and actually forms a bridge joining two adjacent frames. I did what
So, remember a couple posts back where I said we added a second brood box to hive 1? Well this past weekend during our inspection, we decided to backtrack and remove it. It had been in place for 4 days and there was absolutely no activity on it. Our strong hive (hive 2) already had 4 frames being drawn and eggs being laid in the same amount of time after adding the second brood box on it, so we knew
My friend Caitlin texted me last night to say “Bees are everywhere!” She saw this scarf and thought of me. She was sweet enough to pick it up for me and it was waiting on my desk at work this morning. Love it! Thanks Caitlin!
A week ago (3 weeks after installation), hive 2 had drawn out about 75% of the frames, which is the point at which most beekeepers add a second brood chamber. If you fail to give the queen enough room to lay eggs, the colony may decide to swarm and leave the hive. To avoid this, we added a second brood chamber above the first. To our surprise, after only 1 week with the second story, this past weekend’s inspection revealed 4
At happy hour on Friday, my co-workers and I came up with the perfect name for the Queen in hive 2. With apologies to the Bloggess (who I love!) for stealing the name of her giant metal chicken, we christened our second queen “BeeyoncĂ©”! We did a hive inspection Sunday afternoon, and Beeyonce is an egg-laying machine! Almost 3 frames in the new 2nd brood chamber we added a week ago are absolutely filled with eggs and larva! Go Queen B!