Monday, August 4, 2008

Todays inspection

Today we did a thorough inspection of both Fauna and Freya. Fauna is doing great since we combined her with Flora - both hives have accepted each other well - we removed the rest of the newspaper and checked both hive boxes - there is a laying Queen as we saw brood in all stages and there is plenty of honey now so the hive is doing well at last. We put the brood fill frame sin the lower brood box and as there were at least 7 - 8 filled frames, we kept the upper super in place and put a couple of honey filled frames in it to entice the bees up...we'll check again in a week or two.

We checked on Freya - the swarm hive as well today - this hive is SUPERB!!! We gave it a super just a few weeks ago before we went on holiday and it is FULL!!!! So today we are adding a second super!!!!!! The super that is on right now is full of frames of brood and honey - the most BEAUTIFUL complete frames of honeycomb I have ever seen :) What clever bees :) and so much brood it's unreal! In a couple of weeks if the other hive is not doing well I plan to give them a frame or two of brood from Freya. This hive has soooooooo many bees it's amazing and they are friendly bees now :) I love this hive now - my favourite I think :) probably because they came to me :)

Again we did a complete inspection of both levels. They have an active Queen still and brood at all stages.

We have no more plastic frames left but we have a box of wooden frames to make up but no foundation so for now the bees will have to go foundationless - this will be interesting! We can actually eat some comb honey :) we will have to be careful at handling it.....not that we are planning on harvesting any anyway - and we will have to be careful when moving the hives. Hhhmmmm not a good idea really - we will have to get over to our supply store soon and get some more frames! Or maybe I should switch some around in my other hive where they are less likely to use their frames....

Anyway our inspection went well and we are very happy :)

Our bees are doing very well as Summer draws to an end!

1 comment:

One Alberta Voice said...

This is the first time I've checked out your bee blog. Fascinating stuff! Please keep posting. I love learning this from far away--I have a bit of a phobia. All because a girl told me in kindergarten that because I was a Daisy, bees would want to sting me more than other people. lol. I'm not as bad as I used to be, but still makes me extremely nervous.