Hive Check

The hive was humming, when I walked up. Clearly, the baby bees from a few weeks ago had hatched. Going thru the frames 1 on the edge was empty (not even comb). The other seven frames were packed with egg, c-shaped brood from one to three days old, and lots of capped cells. All in a beautiful semi circle.



The neighbors, and kids all came to look and learned a little bit more about bees.



We even saw the queen, on the first brood frame I pulled!

I added the purple hive stand to give them some landing room, and drilled into this to rigidify the nice ultimate stand we have. We also swapped out the bottom board for the screened bottom bottom board as summer is coming. As the brood chamber was pretty packed, we added a medium above and below the deep.

Current setup looks like this.



More pics of the bees and neighbors here.

Pretty boxes

More hive prep, as we made the hive stand and deep that arrived the other day. I also heat gunned our the other (old) mediums. Then we painted everything, because I heard it rains here.

Refed

Added 3 jars of 1:1 sugar solution to the feeder.

5 Minutes after closing up the hive

Hive check and re-up on feed

Checked on the queen today. Didn't see her but there was definitely baby bees is the c shape of approximately 6 day old 4th instar larvae. I also saw some eggs that would be around 1 day old on another frame. So she is busy laying and building her brood. Mostly in a nice pattern, but disrupted a little right now by the early filling of comb with sugar solution. 

The bees were super chill. I didn't use smoke as I pulled out every frame. Then I switched out the front boardman feeder with my homemade 6-jar feeder that sits in the inner cover. The feeder has mesh so the bees can get from the inner cover out to the jars but not into the empty boxes that are protecting the glassware. This means I can switch them out hassle free. I can also add 1 to 6 jars depending on how much sugar solution I make. We moved away from using the boardman feeder because it was dripping on the path and attracting ants.  With the boardman gone, I also removed the block of wood I had set up to protect and limit the entrance. Now I have the entrance reducer in on the smallest setting.