Day 40

We opened the hive today, 15 days after opening it last time and finding the new Queen. Not 100 percent sure what we found: plenty of honey (capped and uncapped), lots of pollen. Tons of pebbly drone cells, lots of larvae of various stages, maybe a few regular capped cells? We went through the seven bars and didn't see the queen, but then Claire spotted her as we replaced the bars in the original spots. She looked good! We were glad that she was on comb with no drone cells... Is that good???

Look for queen in the 3 pix before the last 2 shots of the honey-- she has the long tapered gold abdomen...

Pictures from first 3 weeks

Day 25

We're still on tenterhooks hoping all is right in the hive. The population is definitely dwindling which of course would be happening naturally. No clear evidence that Queen is in there and laying. This morning I did find three small lens shaped wax caps on the floor – does this mean brood are emerging? The cool weather has made us reluctant to open behind, but maybe this afternoon is the time.

Day 14

What's happening in the hive? Every morning we press our noses against the Plexiglass window to see what's going on. When I have time, I sit by the entrance and watch the girls come and go. These days we're watching for what we call "pollen girls" to come back to the hive with their pollen baskets (little pouches on their back legs) stuffed full of pollen. It looks like they're wearing orange Floaties on the back legs.

Inside the hive we can see that they're building lots and lots of beautiful comb (see below). We have seven top bars with comb so far. But what we can't tell, which is maddening, is whether the queen is actually laying eggs in the comb. To ascertain this, we'd have to smoke and open up the hive, pull out some top bars, and look for the eggs which are about the size of half a grain of rice. I think, in Warre hive fashion, we'll just leave everything be.

Pollen!

The excitement over the past few days has been seeing the bees come back to the hive with their back leg pollen baskets stuffed full of yellow, white, and orange pollen. I can't take a good picture of it, but I'll find another picture elsewhere and post it. It's really extraordinary.

The bees will turn this pollen into "bee bread" which I also have to read up on to remember exactly what it is-they feed it to the young but I don't remember at which stage.

Chris Kohl of Sweet Valkey Hives from whom we bought our hive says that bringing pollen in is a good sign that the hive is raising brood. We haven't seen the queen since she was in her cage and we probably won't open the hive up for a while to check for eggs, so we've got to take it on faith that she's in the huge cluster doing her thing.

If for some reason she's not in there, the workers may start laying eggs which is a bad sign. It means that the queen pheromone has been absent from the hive long enough that the worker ovaries have developed enough to lay. However, because the workers haven't mated, all the eggs they lay will be haploid, unfertilized drone eggs. Not helpful.

I am still planning to go back and post pictures and videos from the first few days, as well as from our several months (years!) of planning for the hive.

Day 8

Didn't do the math on how many dead bees there would be outside the hive each day. Frankly, it's kind of gross. As is the bee poop.

Day 6

I'm going to jump right in here, on Day 6, to report that we HAVE COMB! I spotted it this morning just before I left for work. As has been the case on the other cold mornings since the package was installed, the bees were in a big ball-shaped clump up at the top of the hive. We've been looking for the beginnings of drawn comb on the outer bars, but today the bees were moving around just enough in the middle of the cluster that they revealed a beautiful piece of comb right in the middle! They've obviously  been drawing it out for a couple of days. So cool! It's pure white with tiny cells. I'm relieved that the girls will now have something to store pollen and honey in....And hopefully the queen is in the middle of it all doing her thing.

My entomologist colleague, in response to my enthusiasm that they were drawing comb, remaked wrly, "Wow - they actually know what to do!".  Well of course they do...