Seven frames of brood

This week's hive inspection was fantastic! and disappointing... My second hive - the nuc - is going gangbusters! My lovely neighbour next door is interested in learning how to care for the hive, so she and I opened it up today, and she bravely jumped right in, pulling out frames with bare hands, and eventually taking off the veil, as it impeded her vision.

The hive has grown to all frames. There are nine frames, full of nectar, pollen, brood in all stages, and packed full of bees. I saw brood comb with larva inside - they look like little white grubs curled in the bottom of the comb. There were cells capped over - which are worker bees in the pupa stage, which hatch into new bees in about 2 weeks. There were capped cells that looked like bullets sticking out from the rest of the comb. These are drone bees - the males. They are a little bit bigger than the female bees, so it's very obvious which are which. I couldn't see the queen despite looking for her, but it's obvious she's fine. She can lay 1,000 - 3,000 eggs a day, and it looks like she has been doing just that!

In my course, we were taught that when a hive reaches 7 frames of brood, we must put a couple of frames into another box - called a 'super' - replace the frames with empty ones, then put the super on top of the brood box. The bees on the frames in the super will take care of the brood until it hatches, then the bees will fill the top box with honey. I'll put a screen between the boxes that the worker bees can get through, but the queen can't. So the queen will stay in the bottom to lay eggs, and I'll eventually stack 2 or 3 boxes on top, to gather the honeycomb. If I don't create some extra space for the queen to lay eggs, the she will swarm with half the hive, and I may lose them.

It's very exciting for me as a new beekeeper to have reached the point where I have to put the honey supers on! My extra boxes haven't been painted yet, so I got right on that. I'll put the super on tomorrow.

The disappointing part is my first hive. It looks smaller than the last time I inspected it. The bees don't seem as vibrant either. However, I did find the queen, and watched her dip her body into a couple of cells to lay eggs! Very cool!

So, I have decided to take a frame of brood from my healthy hive and put it in this one. When the bees hatch, they should be able to support the others until it builds up. I'm also going to treat the hive for nosema, a common bee disease, and put some pollen patty and sugar syrup back in.

Finally, I cleaned the bottom boards in both hives - I saw half a dozen varroa mites in the healthy hive, and only 1 or 2 in the unhealthy hive. But neither count is worrisome at the moment.

Next, the ADOPTION!

With all the excitement over the bees, I have not yet blogged about my adoption. I got my paperwork into my adoption agency in November 2007, to ask for an infant girl from Vietnam. It's been a long and (at times) frustrating wait, but things are starting to happen. Out of the 7 Vietnam families that are adopting from my agency, the first family has come home with twins, and the second family has a proposal and will travel in June. I just got an update that I am #4 on the list!

The 'list' is a Canada-wide list, and has recently been re-ordered in date order, rather than separate lists for girls, boys, or either. This means that for the 3 families ahead of me, two of them are from my agency, and one could be anywhere in Canada.

Over the last 2 years, I have been in contact with all of the 7 families, and some of us have become quite close friends. The friendship and support of these other parents-to-be has been incredibly valuable to me, and I look forward to life-long friendships, not only for the parents, but for our children too. They will all have their Vietnamese heritage in common.

Most of us will be bringing our children home this year - 2009 is going to be big!

The "Nuc"

I just got home with 6 nucleus packages, or 'nucs' as the beekeepers call them. A nuc is a box half the size of a hive box with 4 frames of bees, brood, stored honey and pollen, plus a queen. I'm keeping one for myself, the others I picked up as a favor for a couple of other beekeepers. They are buzzing with a low hum in my garage.

Again, I found some very generous neighbors right next door! They were willing to move their woodpile to create space in their backyard, so we went to work last night and set up the hive. Lifting the frames one by one into the new hive box was difficult, only because full frames are very much heavier than empty ones, and there are so many bees, they were crawling all over my hands. They also crawled all over me, a couple made it up my inner pantleg, and I got stung! For the first time! In a delicate area...

So now I've been initiated. I have two hives, almost two weeks worth of experience, and a whole new world of community opening up filled with generous neighbors and fellow beekeepers. I like it!

Check-in

I stopped by the hive Thursday after work to check on the queen. She was out of the cage already! There was a large ball of bees on the middle frames, and I could feel the heat they generated. However, I couldn't see how much comb they had made, because the bees were in the way. They were eating the pollen patty and had eaten about half of the sugar syrup. I topped up the syrup and put the lid back on. I noticed there was a LOT of bee droppings all over the hive. I am worried they might be sick, but after talking with Mike, they may just have let loose once they were out of the package!

I checked the hive again the following Thursday evening. The bees were buzzing happily. There were 3 frames of bees, and they had started to make comb. I am really taken with how white the fresh, new honeycomb is. I gave them some more sugar syrup, but they were not eating much of the pollen patty. I left it on, but will probably take it out next week. It was chilly, so I didn't take any frames out to look for eggs and larva, but I expect the queen is there, and has started laying. We will see next time.

First the bees

I am now officially a beekeeper! My bees arrived Monday, and I installed the hive Monday evening.

I found a generous neighbor who was willing to let me install a hive in his back-yard garden. My host and his family invited some friends over, and Mike, a classmate from my beekeeping course came out to help. We got the cinder-block base leveled, put the hive on top, and dumped a 2 lb. package of bees into it. The queen bee was in a cage with a sugar plug - the bees eat the plug in 2 - 3 days and let her out. It takes about 3 days for the bees to smell the queen's pheromones before they will accept her as their queen, and the hive as their home. I fed them a pollen patty and some sugar syrup, then put the lid on just as it was about to rain.

The bees will stay in the hive while it's raining, and build honeycomb. When the weather clears up and warms up, they will venture out, orient themselves to their new home, and start foraging for nectar and pollen to bring back to the hive. Once the queen eats her way out of the cage, she will start to lay 1,000 to 3,000 eggs a day.

I'll come back in 3 days to check on the bees, and make sure the queen has gotten out.