Week 1, first hive check …taking it all in

Today was my first “real” day in the hives. I must admit, I was excited as well as a little nervous. I had a lot I wanted to accomplish AND I’m suffering from information overload.

By now I have read many books, been to four Bee Association meetings with guest speakers, taken two different all-day classes, one workshop, one “in the yard” workshop and one visit to my mentor’s bee yard.

It is apparently well known in the beekeeping community that if you talk to five different beekeepers, you’ll get five different opinions.

Sometimes those opinions are diametrically opposed or vary greatly. So here I am – going into the yard – what is my approach going to be? I know it will soon feel like second nature, confidence comes with experience, but for now it’s feeling very real, nothing like living in the present!

Getting ready
Before going out to the hives I gathered my bucket with two quart jars of light syrup, my materials needed to test for mites, a notepad, pen, camera and my smoker and hive tools. It was around noon when I headed out.

Going in!

I started with Hive 2 because I knew it was the smaller of the two hives. This allowed me to make an unbaised first impression, which was: that it didn’t seem to be thriving. I guess I thought the bees would have expanded out onto the other frames by now, but they hadn’t. They were still pretty much clustered on the nuc frames. On the other hand, maybe it’s a very young nuc/hive. It seemed like the larva were in an early state. So, who knows, we’ll see what next week brings. It might take off by then.

 

 

Hive 1 is a much different story. It has a much larger population and the nuc frame honeycomb is filling in. This is one of the inner frames and I believe that we’re looking at a frame full of bright yellow pollen…though I’m not 100% sure. I believe the whitish band across the bottom is capped honey. Again, not sure.

Not sure what to think of this. Many of the nuc frames had comb built on the bottom of the frame. It did not appear to be swarm cells, I think it was extra comb, maybe Burr comb. Wasn’t sure what to do. I tried to scrape some from a frame, but it was sticky and hard to scrape and I was afraid I would kill bees in doing so and didn’t want to sound the alarms.

 

 

Lots of pollen on the board. Thats what all the large spots are. Can pollen be collected from the board and used? Hmmm, I’ll have to find out. Did not see any mites on board. Last inspected 4 days ago.

Hive 2 Stats
Box 1
Did not see queen
Did see larva
Few eggs
No comb on new frames
Alcohol wash : 1 mite  (312 bees)

Hive 1 Stats
Box 1
Did not see queen
Saw eggs + larva
Some comb on new frames
Lots of pollen, nectar + brood
Alcohol wash : 1 mite  (278 bees)