Mom always loved you best.

I know you’re supposed to love all of your children the same but certainly hope that it doesn’t hold true for bees as well! I’ve started referring to my two hives as the “over achievers” and the “problem children”.

The latter is the hive that I needed to re-queen and when I was refilling the sugar syrup on Monday, I noticed hive beetle larvae in the feeding tray. After I finished saying “ick, ick, ick”, I fished out the little wormy things, rinsed it out and refilled it with clean syrup. I chatted with my bee association buddies and they recommended hive traps so those are on order now and hopefully will be here when I check the hive again in a week.  More worrisome is the fact that I put the second hive body on nearly three weeks ago and there are no eggs laid in it at all. The bees are busily building out the comb but it is completely empty right now.  I was in the hive for a very quick check Monday-I didn’t get home until nearly 7 and the “girls” weren’t pleased to be bothered so late in the day.  Since it was so late, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking to see if the queen was still there and laying eggs but will do a thorough check next week. There has always been less activity around this hive and though I don’t want to label them “slow”……….they just might not be Mensa material.

My other hive is definitely one to make a new beekeeper proud! There are a slew of bees in all of the chambers, the air in front of the opening always resembles Logan Airport, and most exciting of all-I have honey for harvesting!! When I saw that last night, I was as thrilled as if I had produced it myself! Now, there’s not enough honey to allow me to quit my day job and work as a distributor but it’s a start. Each honey super holds 10 frames and each frame is about 5 inches wide by 16 inches long.

(this is just an example of what the frames look like-they're building comb on the upper part of this one)

Imagine three or four frames with honey on each side and you get the idea of how much we have so far.  The first“nectar flow” of the year-when the spring/summer flowers bloom-is just about over, it usually ends right around the 4^th of July. After this flow, seasoned beekeepers tell me that the bees won’t build up much wax because there’s not as much nectar to gather so why bother building storage space?  So they’ll have a little down time where they will continue making honey from whatever nectar they can collect and will fill the comb that has been constructed up until this point.

The next flow will start in August and go through September so I’ll just leave the super on and they can add to it when the next flowers and plants bloom. I’ll plan on extracting the majority of the crop in the fall but might pull some of the frames a bit earlier to have some honey to give as gifts when my family is here in August.