D's Bees

Weekly Inspection

2007-04-22T20:24:00.000-04:00

Weather: Sunny/81

Hive "A": Lots of stores and lots of bees. Seen eggs, and brood in all stages. They are building comb like crazy.

Hive "A-1": Still no queen and they are out off eggs to make a queen but I have a queen coming a week from this Monday. They have been building up comb and filling it with pollen and sugar syrup.

Both hives will need new boxes very soon so it looks like another trip to dadant. I'm not sure if I want to add another deep or just add a honey super for now for hive "A". For hive "A-1" they will need to move out of the nuc and into a deep but I will do that after the new queen has been released and is laying.

Very Nice Day

2007-04-19T21:18:00.000-04:00

Today was a very nice sunny/81F. It rained last night some time so all the hives got of to a slow start this morning. I guess they don't like the landing strip wet ( lol ). Both hives are bringing in lots of pollen still.

Plants in bloom:
Squash is in bloom and I seen lots on bees on them today.
Tomato is in bloom now also.

Hive "A" has taken down a 1/2 gallon of sugar syrup in the last 15 hours so I guess they are building a lot of comb. I'm not going to open them up and inspect them this week.
Last week they still had plenty of frames to draw out (3 frames untouched, "plastic foundation").

Hive "A-1" sure has a lot of bees for NOT having a queen so I'm going to open them up and take a closer and frame by frame look unless I see open brood or eggs first. I sure hope there is a queen in there. They have slowed down their take on the sugar syrup in the last day.

Cloudy Day

2007-04-18T11:10:00.000-04:00

Its a warm 70F/cloudy. The bees are flying from hives "A" and "A-1".
"A-1" is still awaiting a queen. It should be shipped on 4/30/07 2 day UPS from Rossmans, can't wait. Hive A is bringing in a crap load of pollen and taking down lots of sugar syrup. Building up very well.

Getting started

2007-04-17T08:11:00.000-04:00

I got my first hive from my mentor on 3/19/2007. It was a nice swarm from a hive in a orange grove that he was pollinating at the time. Here is a picture of the swarm before it was removed from the orange tree.