Did my first inspection today. Dad came over and helped out. He had nine hives years ago and is used to being around bees so that was nice. This was my first time ever opening a hive and I really enjoyed it. Decided to go without gloves as we fully expected the bees to be occupied with a nice flow and I want to get used to going without gloves. The bees were super gentle (thanks fatbeeman!) and there must be a good flow on as we had no stings and very little interest. I just got these bees on Wednesday, May 7th, so I decided not to pull all the frames and do a full inspection. My goal was to add some top bars and just get an overall feel for how the bees are doing.

The first hive we opened was doing well. When we smoked the entrance the bees started making a huge noise. No bees came out but they just got really loud. There were nurse bees covering the middle frames and some had their heads buried feeding larva. I didn’t pull the frames out to see larva but I strongly suspect this was what they were doing. They also had some honey capped in the outer frames. Not much, but there was a lot of nectar. Overall they looked good.

The second hive was doing great. When we smoked the entrance there was no noise. They made the first hive look bad. I would say hive 1 had 1/2 to 2/3 the bees of hive 2. There were plenty of bees covering the brood and they were capping honey as well.

I added four top bars to each hive and a frame feeder. Wanted the frame feeder to help the bees if they needed it. I spaced the bars between frames, the feeder, and the follower board so they would have some type of guide to go by. Hopefully anyway.

Posted on May 10th, 2008 by John
Filed under: Beekeeping