#double comb

Hive Organization – Week 12

The death of half of my hive in late May has weighed heavily on me, keeping me out of the hive and away from my blog. Since then the survivors proved their efficiency and the hive has fully recovered. The bees have turned chaos into organization and it is time for me to follow their lead and regain my momentum.

As I read up on beekeeping, each book talked about the “brood nest”,  which I took to…

      As discussed in my earlier post : Full Inspection: Day 11  I recently discovered two double combs in the hive. By double I mean that there were TWO independent combs built on the same bar. After some research and questions asked on the FB group I recently joined “Top Bar Hive Beekeeping in the Pacific Northwest”, I realized the double combs must go.

So I suited up and headed out. The fist…

Full Inspection: Day 11. Finding the Queen and a few surprizes

Nearly two weeks since settling my bees into their new home I took the time to do an extensive inspection of the hive. This meant I picked up every bar and spent several minutes examining each looking for brood, honey and the elusive queen.

I was excited to see that there was comb on 12 of the 26 bars currently available to them and about half of those were large-ish (in my opinion).

The first…