Movin' On Up!

Finally! The bees are moving upstairs! The bees now seem to be drawing comb on the blank frames upstairs and just generally milling around. Here is a picture of what it looks like when I opened the top of the hive:

This is what the bottom deep looks like when I take the top deep off (notice how many more bees are wandering around, the top box should look more like this):

And still no Queenie this time, but I actually saw a whole frame filled with eggs up in the top deep! So even Queenie has moved upstairs.

The bees were extra grouchy today though, I was making a bit more noise than usual (I accidentally made some cracking noises when using my hive tool to break apart the frames. The bees hate that). They buzzed my veil a few times and stung my thumb once. This time around I think the sting was less severe.

Just a Checkup

Nothing exciting this time around, just a regular checkup. I've been having trouble getting the bees to move upstairs. I moved two frames upstairs a while back, but as soon as all of the bees hatched out of their cells, they seemed to vacate and move back downstairs, leaving empty comb up top. Here is a picture of one of empty frames they left upstairs:

I tried moving another frame upstairs, so hopefully the bees take a hint after this. You can see the darker colored frames are the ones from downstairs that I've moved up (2 from last time, 1 with bees on it that I just moved up there):

The other thing that I did this time is fill the buckets around the base posts with vinegar. Apparently vinegar removes the scent of ant trails (which is why I have the buckets there, to keep the ants out of the feeders).

This is also the first time that I have checked the hive and I haven't seen Queenie. I saw some eggs down in the bottom box, so nothing to be alarmed about. As the hive gets bigger, it will be more and more difficult to find her.

Bee Movie

Not the one with Jerry Seinfeld. Brandon took lots of video of my last inspection and edited it all together on his new toy (iPad2). This video shows:

• Me taking a frame out of the hive.
• The comb that the bees have been able to draw on an empty frame over the course of a week.
• Queenie (the queen bee with a white dot on her torso) walking around on a frame.
• Me inspecting a frame.
  
• Baby bees hatching out of their cells (you have to look really hard).
• Me putting a frame back into the hive.

Babees!

I did another inspection today, I didn't have anything specific to do, so I decided to try to clear off some of the propolis that has been collecting. I am using a little mason jar to collect it so maybe I can use it for something later. Here is a picture of my jar of propolis (the orange stuff) along with some of the other things I recently got (I spray bottle of rubbing alcohol to clean my tools and a little blue tote to carry my tools around):

The bees seem to have started another nodule (on the exact same frame as they did before), I should have whacked it off so they don't spend time on it, but I didn't get a very good look inside to see if it was empty again - so I just left it for now. Here is the new nodule (middle left of the frame):

Most of the activity is still down in the lower hive, the bees are doing a great job drawing comb on the two new frames that I put in last week (because I put two old brood frames from the bottom box up in the top brood box). It doesn't look like the queen has visited the top box yet, but I did get to witness a few baby bees (babees, haha, get it?) coming out of their cells in the top top brood frames! The queen laid those eggs before I moved the frames, it takes about 21 days from when the egg is laid until a fully developed worker bee emerges from it's cell. Queens take only 16 days to develop, and drones take 24 days. Here is a picture of my baby bees hatching (there is one bee coming out of a cell head first, that is the one I watched hatch. The bees coming out butt first are adult bees just going into a cell for a peek. If you look at some of the other cell cappings, you can see some more baby bees trying to come out of their cells).

One strange thing that I encountered when checking my top brood box was some yucky little white larvae in the feeder. Gross... I cleaned out the feeder thoroughly and refilled it.  I hope these little guys just go away.

Brandon also put up these nifty signs that I had made. Mom wanted me to put up some sort of sign to warn her gardeners about the bees, I figure it is probably a good idea to have those up from a liability stand point:

The pointy end...

I sent the image of the bulging honey and what I thought was a supersedure cell over to Cheryl at Bear Foot Honey (taking advantage of their digital checkins). So when I did another inspection today I tried some of the things that she suggested.

Cheryl said that she thought my supersedure cell was probably a nodule (a false queen cell which is empty). If I took a peek inside the cell, and it was empty, then I could just remove the nodule (because they bees would be wasting their time on the nodule). But, when I took out the frame that had the nodule on it, it was gone! And to boot, my marked queen was on that frame, so it sounds like everything turned out alright with that.

As far as the bulging honey comb goes, Cheryl said that the bees are looking for more space to store honey. I did add the extra deep, but the bees haven't drawn comb on it yet, so they can't really make use of the extra space. The fact that the comb bulges out can be a problem when moving the frames around, so Cheryl suggested that I take my hive tool and squish it down. In doing this, the honey will drip down the frames to the bottom of the hive and the bees will pick it up and move it somewhere else. I probably didn't do this in the smartest fashion - I was inspecting each frame one by one, and as I saw the bulging honey comb, I would smoosh it down. There was some residual honey left on my hive tool, so anything I touched after that had a bit of honey on it. The bees would cluster around the spilled honey and lick it up - but they were usually in the way of me pushing frames around in the hive so it took me longer to do the inspection (since I was trying to nudge bees out of the way much more). Here is a picture of some smooshed bulging honey comb (if you look closely, you can see the bees licking up the spilled honey along the edges of the broken comb):

I also finished the first half of the Apiguard treatments today (the treatment that helps kill the Varroa mites). The bees had put a lot of propolis around the tray (I saved it because I can hear you can make things out of it - I'll see if there is anything seems worth it). The propolis is the orange stuff around the metal tray, it is very sticky. The bees use it to seal up the hive, humans use if for medicinal purposes and I hear that propolis is even used as varnish for Stradivari violins.

The bees have also made much more progress on the new frame in their bottom deep. They have drawn most of the comb, and have even filled and capped some cells:

In order to encourage the bees to move upstairs to their new box a bit quicker, Cheryl suggested that I move a few brood frames up to the upper deep. I moved two empty frames from the top level down to the bottom as well (the dark frames covered in bees are from the bottom deep - that white thing is shortening with powdered sugar in wax paper. That patty helps guard against tracheal mites):

Wax production takes approximately 6 times more energy for a bee to produce than honey, so in order to get the bees to produce more wax, I've been supplementing their honey with some sugar water. I put a 1:1 sugar water mix into their feeder (the black thing on the far side of the above picture).

And lastly, I have finally had my first encounter with the pointy end of the bee. I went out to the hive with no protection from the bees just to pick up a few things I had left out there. This wouldn't usually be a problem, but I noticed that I had dripped some honey on the hive stand, so I wiped it up with my finger (bad idea number one). There were a few bees nearby, and two of them started to lick the honey off my fingers - very cute actually. I was very tempted to take a picture of the bees licking honey off of my finger, so I picked up my camera that was nearby and went back to the hive (bad idea number two). As I walked away from the hive a bee flew after me and stung the hand that had the honey on it, I bet she didn't like the idea of me walking away with her honey. All in all, I probably deserved that sting, and it was not nearly the worst thing that I've ever been stabbed by (for those who remember the sea urchin incident where I lost mobility in my left thumb for over a week). This was my first bee sting (ever), and I seem to react the same way as I do to most other insects - the area turns white and swells a bit (there is a lot more soreness than I was expecting though, my pinky still hurts and is swollen and it has been nearly 8 hours. I'm sure I'll live though). The sting is near the base of my pinky.