Hive Check : Going back in time

April 17th 2010

What you see here to the left is a picture of the package of bees that I picked up on April 17th, 2010.  A package is made up of bees and a queen from different hives.  Until these bees had been placed into the package most of them had never been near each other.  They must be kept together like this for several days so their individual odors mix and become one and so they can all get accustomed to the pheromones of their new queen.  The queen cage and the feeding can are both suspended from the top of the box.  If memory serves, this package of bees was from Georgia.

The picture to the right is my husband carrying the nuc (pronounced nuke).  Inside the box are local bees and a queen that have been with each other for some time. The queen has laid some eggs and there will be larva on the foundation.  This hive of bees won't have to work as hard as the package bees because they are 5 frames ahead of the game.  I heard that nucs were much better to start out with and had originally wanted two but was able to only get one.

April 27th 2010

This picture to the left is of the inner cover with honeycomb attached to it.  The picture is upside down but that's how it would have looked if I had been able to take the picture as I was lifting off the inner cover. 

The picture to the right is the other half of the comb that the bees built in the empty super.  If you look closely you can see the plastic zip loc bag that I'd used to feed the bees the sugar water.  I'd placed the empty super on top of the full one so that I could leave the bags full of sugar water in the hive.  This extra comb was built in the empty space - had I checked the hive a few days before I probably would have caught this and wouldn't have had to destroy this beautiful comb.  I've saved the wax so I can melt it down and make something fun.

To the left you can see some honeycomb with some actual honey in it.  I was absolutely elated that I was going to be able to try some honey for the first time, we weren't anticipating any until next year.  You'd have laughed if you saw me chewing the honey out of the wax comb and exclaiming how good it was and how excited I was that I had my own honey!  Many mistakes turn out to be negative experiences but this one had a yummy ending!

If you'e been curious about a bee's stinger, here is a picture of one on the edge of a super.  To get an idea of the size, look at the picture of the stinger that is on the tip of my glove.  A poor bee lost it's life because it thought it would sting me on my glove.  Fortunately for me the glove was just thick enough.