Bees -- First Inspection

We had a beautiful weekend and were home all weekend so I could get some things done.  I got my garden all cleaned off and ready to till when the soil dries out enough.  They are predicting a lot of rain through the next three or four days so it won't be soon.  I also pulled the straw off of my strawberries so they could start growing.  I may have to put the straw back if we have more frost.

My apricots continue to bloom.  I searched for a bee and saw a couple on Saturday morning.  I went back out in the afternoon and there was a steady hum with bees all over the tree.  I know that they were my bees because I have never seen that many honey bees on a blooming fruit tree before.  I'm anxious to see if it has an effect on the amount of fruit that is set.

The bees were back on Sunday morning.  I took these pictures then.  They were so quick in moving from blossom to blossom it was hard to catch them in focus.  I have a lot of poor pictures.

I could see on several of them that they were gathering pollen on the pollen sacks on their hind legs.  They were gone in the afternoon because the wind picked up.  My plums just started blooming this afternoon --just a few blossoms opened.  It was too windy for bees, but I hope that the bees get to them while they are open.

I also got some pictures of spring beauties coming among the oak leaves in the forest next to the house.  These have probably been up for a while but they only bloom when the sun is shining and we've had several cloudy days.

They were coming up all around the floor of the forest.  This one came up next to a rotting log.

The most exciting event of the day was my first inspection of the bees that I installed in hives last weekend.  This the fourth frame from the first hive (closest to the pond).  It is covered with a lot of busy bees.  The frames contain plastic foundation imprinted with the honeycomb shape and covered with beeswax.  The foundation looks like the yellow area along the far right side of this frame.  The white is the beeswax that the bees are putting on the foundation to make comb.

This is a frame with some "burr comb" on it.  Burr comb is comb built outside of the area of the frame where the bees are supposed to build.  This was one of the frames that had the queen cage between them, so there was more space than normal between the frames.  The bees build this burr comb in that extra space.  I had to scrape it off so that everything would fit together properly.  Aside from the burr comb, this frame seems to be drawn out nicely.

This looking down into the second hive.  Two frames have been removed to allow space to work.  You can see the burr comb between the frames that were holding the queen cage.  In this hive, the queen cage had fallen to the floor of the hive, but it was empty and I briefly saw the queen during my inspection covered with bees on one of the busiest frames.

There's one of the frames with burr comb attached.  It is otherwise drawn out nicely.  I did see larva in some cells in both hives so I know that I have laying queens in each hive, though I couldn't see the eggs.  Both queens must have been released from their cages on the day I installed the bees or the next day to have larva already in cells.  I might possibly have some capped brood cells by the time that I inspect next weekend.

Here is another frame from the second hive, with drawn comb and lots of bees working.  You can see the queen cage laying on the floor of the hive below.  Everything looked good in both hives and they seemed about equal in strength.  The both had some cells with pollen in them as well as some liquid -- either nectar or stored sugar water.  The bees didn't seem too disturbed about the process, though there seemed to be one bee that wanted to follow me around when I left the area.  She didn't follow me all the way to the car, though.