Happy Bees, 5 weeks

Yesterday I had two long time friends come over and help me with a bee inspection. Jan has been keeping bees for 4 years I think and David has been keeping bees for a few years I believe. The three of us smoked the hive and sorted through the frames. The bees were pretty docile considering the 90+ degree heat, David got the only bee sting.

We searched with three pairs of eyes looking for the queen and did not find her. The photos I took revealed the queen on my second pass of examining the photo. She is the long bee in the photo above. This the first time I have seen her since she was released in the hive with the package 5 weeks ago.

We also looked for newly hatched brood, Jan thought in a week I should have plenty.  The photo above revealing these two gray fuzzy bees in the center and top left that are in fact some of my first babies!! Looking though all the photos I did see 5 cells that had been exited by new bees. I did not note any drone brood, please let me know if you see any in these photos. They do not need drone brood right now if I am correct.

This worker bee was in this honey cell at the top of the hive. I though she might have been killed when we opened the hive, but she moved when I touched her. Covered in honey or syrup maybe she is OK?

Jan tells me this is a moth cocoon , we found one on the front and another on a back of the hive under the cover. These were the only pests found in the hive thus far, crossing our fingers. I looked long and hard at the photos and saw no mites or beetles!

This frame had lots of capped honey (the white cells on the top left and center). I was told I need to add horizontal wire to these frames for more support when we spin honey out of them. The honey we have right now would likely not be very tasty because it is mostly from the sugar syrup we are feeding the bees. A colony of bees needs about 100 pounds of honey the get them through winter. So no honey harvesting this year.

Another frame of honey and the bees drawing out the wax comb.

This was the most impressive frame we took out to inspect. It weighed maybe 10 pounds alone, both sides looked like this.

Another good frame with lots of capped brood and honey at the top. Honey was dripping from Jan's gloves!

Here we have lots of larva being tended by nursery bees. These cells will be capped pretty soon.

Both Jan and David agreed we have a hive that is doing very well. I plan on adding another brood box next week. They also though our location was ideal with lots of water and nectar sources. We estimated the hive likely has 20 pounds of honey in it right now.

My big Vitex tree is in full bloom and we estimated seeing at least 75 bumble bees in it, not sure if the honey bees are using it or not. Neither of my friends had seen so many bumble bees in one place, it was impressive.