Tag Archives: queen

Swarm!

Today (May 4th), just as I was thinking about leaving work and heading to the gym I get this frantic text from Rob (and my panicked reply): Apparently, he had just happened to look out the back window and noticed a dark mass hanging off a branch about 30-40 feet up in a tree in the back yard. So I raced home, sure that it was one of our hives that had swarmed! When we had done our inspection on

Queen Elsa makes her appearance!

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  

Delving into the hive life

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

Queen B

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 “Beeyoncé”! 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!  

Hive Personalities

Just over 2 weeks into our beekeeping adventures, and already each Hive has been developing its own personality. We had plans to name the hives something witty but so far are just calling them Hive 1 and 2.  Anyway…during this weekends inspection, we observed that Hive 2 is about double the population of Hive 1. The bees had drawn out more than 6 of the eight frames with wax, 2 frames of which are now “sealed brood”. This means that

Meeting Her Majesty the Queen! (1st inspection)

Busy weekend, lots to talk about! Between running a 4 mile race, attending a friend’s baby shower (which had bee-themed favors btw 😉 ), a neighborhood picnic, and putting in more of the vegetable garden, we found time to do our first full hive inspections one week after the installation. Suffice to say that everything looked pretty ok, with the exception of a lot of unwanted “burr comb” in the now empty feeder. Those hungry bees went through almost a gallon