We should have checked the bees yesterday when the high temps were in the 70s. Today, while we were out there in the sun it was about 85 degrees. Whew! With canvas bee suits on, that makes for hot work! But sweating is good for you, right? So I'm not complaining.
Our last serious bee check was June 15th. Anya had a queen cell at that time. Today there wasn't much but a frame with some milky white. It didn't look like brood that we're used to, but we saw the same thing in Charlie so maybe it's my eyes or the heat. We've had lots of hot days this summer so maybe we need to look for ways to cool things off.
Bianca had no sign of a laying queen so once again we gave that hive a frame of eggs and larvae from Charlie, the hive that continues to have lots of brood. That queen is an empress! We put it in the middle of the second box from the bottom. It's possible there's a queen who isn't laying yet since we did the same thing on June 15th. If they reared a queen, she would be hatched by now (about 15 days until the queen matures and exits the queen cell which would be about July 1st). She would still need another week to take her maiden flight, mate, and begin laying. So we'll see how things are during the next bee check in about two weeks.
When we're inspecting the hives we usually take out a few frames while we look at the others. It makes inspecting easier to be able to move frames around. That's what we did today. Plenty of bees in all three hives.
We took two frames of capped honey out of Bianca and four from Charlie. That gives us a total of 13 in the fridge waiting for harvesting and making up about 40 pounds of liquid gold. There were other frames we could have taken, but we want to wait and make sure all the hives have plenty of stores for the winter.
The last thing we did was put in some dry swiffer sheets to try to trap the small hive beetles. They are a terrible pest and can really do a number on a hive. We saw some in all the hives including the swarm hive which we took down. "A swarm in July isn't worth a fly" so no sense keeping it out there.
We're still praying to the patron saints of beekeepers to get all our hives with laying queens. It's a fun hobby, but can be pretty frustrating as this season has been. We'll be happy if we can just keep our three hives going well as we head into bee winter. Three hives are more than enough work for these old geezers!
I got stung through my glove again today on the tip of my middle finger, but am getting almost no reaction. Hopefully these stings are desensitizing me to bee venom and I will get less reaction to stings than I have in the past.
Come visit us at Camp Kreitzer for a honey tasting.
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