21 days

June 3, 2013

Yesterday, I saw my bees for the first time in 21 days. I honestly expected them to either have flown away or to be dead. I'm not sure why. I guess I figured I did something wrong when I installed them. I was a little nervous because I made entrances out of sticks and am very happy my DIY entrances did the trick! It was about 65 degrees in the sun yesterday. My bees are not in the sun and were not very active at the hive but I figured it is because it's still fairly cool.

I opened up the first hive and pulled out a nearly full frame of brood! I was SO excited! Not only was the brood capped off and ready to pop but there were eggs and larvae. I even found my queen right away! There was about 2 frames of brood and 2 frames of nectar. There was a frame of pollen and 2 frames of honey (from last year). I took the feeder out and added an empty frame. Typically, I would cram 9 frames in one box but this year, I decided to give them a little more space and do only 8 frames per box.

The bees got quite active and angry from me being in the hive. I am pretty excited about this because it was cool outside and I smoked them pretty good. I think I have aggressive bees this year and hope they produce a lot of honey.

I opened the second hive (I thought this hive would not do very well) and had pretty much the same story. Phil came with me and I think he was pretty excited he found the queen before I did ;-). Complete success!

I will start going to the hive once per week now and continue that throughout the summer. I'll try to snap some photos sometime soon.

Until then...