Bumblebees and a Slug

This week in the beehives:
Well, Matt's bees are still building comb on the bottom of the feeder. We figured out a way to elevate the feeder on a topless table (ooh, racy!) so we can inspect it and scrape it off more easily. There is larvae and new eggs in both hives, and we saw Matt's queen but we didn't see mine. Those queens can be so elusive!

We also opened the hive reducer to the next biggest size. When we checked my hive, I found that there was a slug in there! Is there no where sacred that slugs don't go in this infernally damp state? The bees had killed it of course and they were trying to get rid of it somehow. I took it out. Other than that they seemed to be doing fine. In the garden, ever since I let the kale and cabbage bloom, the bumblebees have been all OVER the flowers! They are so fuzzy and fat. Go for it bumblebees!

Wild Comb and Hatching Bees

Booo! I got stung on Tuesday trying to help Matt adjust his hive. It was my fault because I didn't put my bee costume on and I had a navy blue shirt on. They don't like dark colors. It wasn't too bad not much swelling at all, but I wanted to have a sting free record for as long as possible. I guess I've been inducted into the official beekeepers club now.

Yesterday we checked our hives.  We both had burr comb between the feeder and the top of the frames. Whenever there is too much space, the bees will fill it with comb. It's not bad for the bees to build this extra comb, but it makes it difficult for us to work with them when things are all stuck together so we have to scrape it off. 

Matt's Hive

Kate's Hive

We also spotted Matt's queen which was good: 

We knew there would be a bunch of bees hatching soon, but when we pulled Matt's frames we saw that a lot had hatched! See all those empty cells that are dark? Most of those are empty from bees hatching out of them. Their first job after hatching is to clean out the little space they just climbed out of. Clean your room little bee! If you look closely at the very bottom left of the picture, there is a bee hatching with it's head showing. It is hard to see in this picture, but see the video for a better look. 

It was hard to keep holding the frame up while the bees hatched, and the bees were starting to get annoyed so we had to put them back in. One of these days we will actually see one climbing out. 

Bee Club, Burr Comb and Queen

We went to our first bee club meeting this week. Someone from the Washington State University Snohomish County Extension Program came to talk about bee diseases and to show us how to dissect the bees and to check for these diseases under a microscope. For one of the diseases, tracheal mites, you have to pull the head off the dead bee and find a certain part of her trachea. Crazy!! I hate tracheal mites, horrible. I didn't try to dissect, but I watched and learned. Needless to say, it was an informative bee club meeting. I also had fun people watching. I'm pretty sure Santa was at the meeting.

We checked the bees on Saturday and gave them more sugar syrup. Matt's bees were so busy that they built comb between the feeder and the frame. Matt scraped it off, it was filled with nectar/sugar syrup. Sticky! Matt moved some of the frames to encourage them to draw out more comb. Come on bees, make comb on the empty frames please!

There is a lot of capped brood too! 

My hive is doing well. I have lots of capped brood as well,

and it looks artsy where the bees have deposited pollen. 

AAAND, we saw the queen! She is marked with a white dot so she is easier to find. Can you see her? She is longer and more uniformly colored than the other bees with a white dot on her back. She was moving very fast. I think she was mad because she was interrupted and it was so bright. Matt's queen is not marked so we have not found her yet, but we know she is there because there are a lot of recently laid eggs! We are getting ready for lots of new bees to hatch.

Bee Dances and Cabbage Flowers

Yesterday, we had an exciting time checking the hives. Matt got his first sting. It was just a thumb in the wrong place, wrong time. He felt bad for the bee's death. It was interesting how quickly the other bees reacted to the stinging. Some of the bees buzzed louder and flew at us for a few seconds, then they quieted down when we stayed calm. The bees think there is danger when a another bee stings because they can detect the pharemones. In Matt's hive, the larvae are getting big as you can see below.

After about 6 days after the egg is laid, the nurse bees cap the cell with wax and the larvae pupate into adult bees. In the picture below, you can see the capped cells. Matt's hive will have lots of new bees soon!

Mine are getting busy as well with a few capped brood. As we were checking my hive, I noticed a worker bee doing a bee dance! Matt saw it too, she was walking in a pattern and then she would shake her body very quickly. She repeated this a few times with other bees crowded around watching. She was telling the other bees where the food was. Maybe it was the waggle dance. It was fantastic to witness! I bet she was telling them about the cabbage flowers in my garden. 

Some of the cabbage and kale in our vegetable garden survived the winter. I decided to let a few of them go to flower so the bees could have some nectar. And to make room for new veggies. The flowers are quite nice to look at as well!

Look at that little bee hard at work!

Workin' It!

Today it was just warm enough to work the hives. I opened mine only briefly to make sure the workers had released the queen (they had), and to add some sugar syrup. Matt opened his hive to check on the status of the bees; to see how they are coming along. It was really amazing that after only eight days, the bees had already drawn out lots of comb, are collecting nectar and pollen, the queen has laid eggs, and the larvae are all curled up and growing!

This is the top feeder. You can kind of see the bees drinking the sugar syrup there under the screen.

Matt's busy bees

If you look closely, you can see pollen stored in some of the cells, (the yellowish looking ones), and the little larvae curled up in some of the honey comb cells. It takes seven days between when the egg is laid and when the cell is capped with wax to let the larva grow through it's pupal stage and undergo metamorphasis into an adult bee.  

It's a baby bee nursery!

Let the Competition Beegin!

Whoa, I had an exciting evening of beekeeping. We decided to have two hives, so now Matt thinks we are competing with our hives. I'm not sure about how we calculate the "winner." My bees were delivered to the apiary supply store today, so Matt, who has more flexibility at work went and picked them up on his way home. They'd been in their nuc box for 3 days already and the people at the store said we should hive them as soon as we could. We were thinking of waiting until Saturday after I got off from work but that seemed like a long time. The weather was going to be rainy today, Thursday and Friday but nice on Saturday, but I figured we had better just hive them now. It wasn't raining and it was 60 degrees, no time like the present. I wouldn't get home until 6:15 so Matt prepared all my things I would need and made some more sugar syrup to be ready for when I got home. We would be cutting it close as it was getting late in the day.

I decided to wear my bee costume (as I like to call it) and Matt was on video duty. I guess I could have just opened the box and set it into the hive and let them crawl out but I decided to do the dump and shake method. My bees seemed much more clingy than Matt's did. They were crawling all over me! But then right, and I mean RIGHT after the bees were mostly in, it started pouring, and I mean POURING rain. There was drama at the hive because some of the bees were getting soaked and so we quickly put a board up to umbrella the entrance and the nuc box. Quite a few bees decided to stay in the box because the weather was so crazy, so when it let up, Matt opened it up and encouraged them into the hive. They crawled into the hive one after the other. (See video at the bottom). I hope they didn't get too cold and wet.

The video cut off at the end but I put the last frame in, put the top feeder on and then the top on with no squished bees!

Long Live the Queen!

Matt here:

This afternoon I snuck into the hive to see if the worker bees had released the queen, and they had. First I lightly smoked the entrance, then I removed the top feeder and cover and used a little smoke to keep the bees off the top of the frames. I removed the empty queen cage. I noticed that the bees have already drawn out some comb on the frames on either side of the queen cage. Later this afternoon, I also saw some bees bringing pollen back to the hive.

The Smoker