Get ready for some pictures

Yeah, it’s been a while. I did an inspection June 24th, but I could not get hardly any pictures. The main reason I did the inspection was to check the queen cups in the Frigga hive. Spoiler alert, they’re just cups. They weren’t getting ready to swarm or anything. Though now, they have 5 cups in the hive, all on different frames. The only thing interesting from that inspection was the bumblebee who tried to get into the Frigga hive through the front door. She was a bit too big to fit through the honeybee sized openings on the hive. She’d probably fit if I had the queen door open on one of the vent sites. Good thing I don’t have those open!

Miss Bumblebee flying back to her hive. My bees ignored her except when she flew a little too close to the entrance. Thank goodness she stayed away from Galadriel! Those girls would have chewed her up and spit her out!

Yesterday, July 3rd, had the most perfect weather for inspections. We had clear, blue skies. It wasn’t overly hot, not that it matters with where our hives are located. If there’s a breeze, I rarely feel it. My son, T, played photographer yesterday. I have SOOOOOOOO many AWESOME pictures to share!! He did a fabulous job getting pictures of Frigga for me. He left before I got into the Galadriel hive. They weren’t as hateful yesterday, but they did get irritated and when they refused to move so I could put the second deep back on and, well, all Hades broke loose. I have one picture of Galadriel. Two pictures. T took a pic of the landing board.

Galadriel’s landing board prior to starting inspections. There is still pollen and I believe some nectar coming in, but I’m feeding anyway to help get the top deeps filled with comb.

Top bars of the bottom deep of the Galadriel hive. I swear 80% of the bees were in this box. I don’t know why they don’t like the top deep.

In the Frigga hive, the queen has moved into the top deep and has started laying there. They had several frames full of some gorgeous honey, but I’m leaving all of that for them this year. First year is a comb building year. Next year, they can make me some honey to share. Or not. We’ll see.

Can you SPOT the queen? Yeah, that’s her in the middle towards the bottom of the frame with the white spot on her back. Look at that brood pattern! Girlfriend is an egg laying champ!

Capped honey, in the lower left with most of the rest of the frame fill with nectar. In the middle section there *might* be some pollen.

Each deep has half plastic foundation and half foundationless frames. That comb on the right is mostly capped honey on both sides. There’s also some brood on the left. The clear comb on the bottom in the middle are bigger cells meant for raising drones. They’ll fill those cells with honey if they need to do so.

One frame of pollen stores for Frigga. There were at least 2 frames like this. This is in the bottom box. They’re slowly but surely drawing out each frame completely. Since I leveled the hive, wonky comb has stopped being made. I just hope their need to put honey along the top edge of brood comb doesn’t bite them come winter.

See what I mean? Lots of pictures. These 7, well 6 since 1 pic was from the previous inspection, are just 6 of 40+ pictures T took. I managed to look at every frame in this hive yesterday. it had been a hot minute since the last time I did that. It was needed. Seeing the pollen and how much honey they have really set my mind at ease. I’m still putting 1:1 sugar syrup in their feeders, and I’m going to get a pollen feeder set up here in the next few days. I still feel better knowing there’s still food out there for them.

This comb had some pollen stores in it, but it was mostly empty comb. There were a couple of frames of comb like this; just waiting for Queen Frigga to come by and lay eggs for some more worker bees. Not honey bound and they have lots of room for expansion.

I may not know what the heck I’m doing as far as being a beekeeper, but these girls sure know what they’re doing! I make sure they have what they need and they are doing what they were born to do!

Drone brood on the left. Worker bee brood on the right.

Worker bee brood with capped honey around the edges. Look at all my beautiful girls and future beautiful girls!

More worker bee brood with some honey around the edges. The Frigga queen is an egg laying champ!

Like I said, I have A LOT more pictures, but I won’t bore you by posting ALL of them! These are a pretty good representation of how things are going in the Frigga hive. I hope she makes it through the winter because I am very much hoping to make a split off her next spring so I can welcome Darcy Lewis to the family!

Next time I plan to inspect one hive one day and the other hive the next day. Maybe that will help my recovering after inspections because I have become so heat intolerant after all my surgeries. Maybe breaking up the chore will help with that and help me feel fresh and confident getting into the Galadriel hive. The hope is there at least!

As always, if you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them. If I can’t, I know a group of people who can!

Also, HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to all those in the United States. To everyone else, Happy Sunday! I hope the weather is perfect for whatever you have planned today! Until next time!!