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.