pollen packing

Those bees are not bees.

Turns out it's not a bee at all, but a hoverfly. Many types of insects were all over the Asters, also called the Michaelmas Daisy.

Our bees and those bees.

Late Summer, Hives Doing Fantastic!

Good news from yesterday's hive inspections: there is lots and LOTS of new BROOD in the new hive! That means our new queen hatched as predicted last week, got knocked up by some lucky now dead drone (or a few) and HUZZAH, baby bees are ON THEIR WAY! The mature bees are still holding up pretty well, they've busily cleaned up all those yucky dusty frames (kinda dark old wax) but they're working away on filling them in with honey and pollen stores, and of course, now brood! They wouldn't touch those plastic bases, so I replaced them with some wired real wax bases from Bob's Bee Supplies, and am going to swap out the feeder for a frame too. (Forgot to bring one from the old hive, need to get on that next week!) Heather had fed them several more times, so they've been getting the sugar water supplement for about a month, and they've got LOTS of capped honey that came over with them, so I think no more need for feed.

And the original hive (with the two-year-old queen) seems to be doing well too! Still isn't much honey in the super, very light to non-existent actually, but we only put the super on in July (I think) and they've had a lot of work to draw out all those new frames (and a few are even plastic but they're working on them anyway!) so I doubt we'll see much honey in there until late next summer. Will probably just take it off and pack it up in September if it's still fairly empty. There were also dozens and dozens of drones that were just sitting in the bottom of the super, it seemed like they were all too big to get through the queen excluder, and they were getting chased out by the workers if they tried going in the front door, so they were just hanging about. I guess it is getting to be that time of year when they're going to get the boot. But, anyway, queen is still laying, there is lots of new brood, and they've also cleaned up all the new frames that went in last month. Cleaned up a bit of burr comb and switched out the old plastic base in frame #2 of top brood box. Also, there are several frames of capped honey, in that top brood box, so I think we could safely take out two or three, depending on how well stocked the bottom box. Will discuss with everyone end of September, esp. if this great weather keeps up!

Hope Buzz had a great trip... See y'all soon! -=pj=-