Booty's Bees

My first full inspection for the new year! If you missed my recap of the previous year, you can read it here:

 https://thelittlebeeblog.tumblr.com/post/157994711009/catching-you-up-the-first-post

I’d say this inspection could not have gone any better!

The honey super (that’s the top box where the bees store most of their honey), was almost completely empty. This is normal as they probably ate most of that honey during the winter in order to survive. I went ahead and left the super on, and added a queen excluder to it. A queen excluder is a special mesh placed between two boxes that allows only worker bees and not the queen to pass through. This is used to prevent the queen from getting into the honey super and laying eggs. No one likes baby bees mixed into their honey, am I right?

The bottom two deep boxes, also called brood boxes, is where the queen lays her eggs, and where most of the colony resides. These boxes were in perfect condition! The queen has already started to lay eggs, and I even witnessed some hatching! Yay new baby bees!

During the inspection I only found one small hive beetle. This is great because during the fall of last year I counted about thirty at their peak. Small hive beetles are a common pest in the hive. They lay their eggs in the beeswax. Once the beetle eggs hatch the larvae poop all over the honey, which, if the beetles are in big enough quantities, will cause the honey to ferment. Fermented honey is completely useless to bees or humans. In a good and strong colony of bees, the bees will corral the beetles into a corner and kill them, and clean up any poop they may leave behind.

In addition, I spotted a couple signs of varroa mites. I saw one hitching a ride on one of the bees, and I saw a couple of what appeared to be dead bee larvae. I’ll spare you the details of how varroa function, because I’m not sure I completely understand it, but I know it’s complicated. I’ll have to keep my eyes out for more signs of the mite.

All in all, the first inspection went terrific. The colony is healthy and strong. The queen is already laying, and I’ve seen bees carrying pollen into the hive to feed the new babies. I’m excited to see what the rest of the spring brings for me and my bees!

Here’s a great little graph that may help you familiarize yourself with a bee hive:

The following is just some data I’m going to use to track my colony, you can ignore it if you want.

Beetle Count: 1

Varroa: None-Low

Eggs: Approx. 1.5 frames

for all your bee valentine’s cards needs

bonus:

for the bees!

Different types of cells - full post on http://beemaniacs.com/cells-cells-and-cells/

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