June 2015

June 9, 2015
Hive 1 - We were up cleaning the cabin, and I hadn't checked the beehives since I dropped them off on May 23rd.  I opened up Hive 1.  There was not anything happening in the 2nd box I had added.  When I got down to the 1st box, there were only bees on the top of 2-3 frames.  When I took out the 1st frame to start checking, they were mad and swarmed me and were hitting my head gear.  Then I felt a sting on my leg.  I was wearing levis and thought I was completely ready with my boots and all my gear.  I was nervous now.  I didn't know if I was going to have another bad reaction and have to use my epi pen.  I decided that I should shut it back up and go inside so I could watch myself to see what happened.

It was frustrating that I got stung on my first hive I opened up.

June 18, 2015
Hive 3 - I decided that I had better leave my hive that was mean till a little later.  As I took off the top feeder, I noticed there were maybe 10 bees feeding.  Not too many.  They had not started on the 3rd box yet.  The second box was 70% full of bees.  The first couple of frames I looked at had brood, and they all looked really healthy.  I had been thinking and wondering about the Hive 1 while I had been at home since the 9th.  I wondered if they were so mean because they did not have a queen.  I knew if there were some good frames in the others that I should probably share.  I knew I could not put a medium in a large whole, so I got into the bottom box.  I found a frame with eggs and young brood that was quite full.  I checked for the queen, and then opened up Hive 1 and put it in.  The bees from Hive 1 were mad that I opened it up.  I used the smoker and then added the frame of brood.  Hive 3 seemed to be really happy.  They seemed to settle down a lot once I did that.

Hive 2 - It is my healthiest and biggest hive.  They had just started to go into the 3rd box and start building on it.  There were a few in the feeder but not too many.  Box 2 was full.  Then I got into box 1 to see if I could find another frame for Hive 1.  I found one and added it, finished checking Hive 2 a little more.  I couldn't see any signs of foulbrood in any of the hives.

Hive 1 - when I finally started pulling out the original frames to check them, they still were not happy, but it was definitely better than when I opened it on the 9th and earlier today.  They had settled down a little with the smoke and the 2 new frames.  After looking, I was confused because I was seeing brood.  I finally found a frame that had eggs in it.  The closer I looked, I could finally see that there were 2-3 eggs in some of the frames.  A sign of laying workers.  Hopefully with the new eggs and brood, they will make a new queen and stop laying.  It will be interesting to check on the hive when I come back up to Timber Lakes.

The hives were busy this afternoon.  Lots of bees doing their number 8 flights.  I couldn't see any bees on the flowers around our cabin.  I was so confused.  I took a drive as I headed out and found lots of bees on the flowers by the roadside.  They were busy.  It was good to see, and I took lots of pictures.