May 16th 2024
Life has been busy! We went and saw the bees last weekend but I'm just now getting around to telling you all about it. The weather was really nice, no wind like last week and it was bright and sunny so many bees were out of the hive. This week our goal was checking on their progress filling up all the frames in their first box. The general rule of thumb is not to add another box until 7 or 8 out of 10 frames are full. We're currently sitting at around 6 frames full in each box. They'll probably be ready for a new box next week. We haven't seen the queens yet but we know they are still there because we saw fresh eggs and larvae.
We did notice that they were still ignoring the frames with plastic foundation. They were also ignoring the empty frames behind the foundation frame even though they were using the empty frames on the other side of the hive. We think the foundations made them feel trapped and they weren't exploring to the far side of the foundation. We did some home renovation on both hives and moved the foundation frames to the far outside. Hopefully we will see some comb on the foundationless frames next week!
The bees are so gentle this year. They also make way less propolis than the bees last season. Propolis is their sticky glue-like substance they use to seal cracks in their hive. Last summer's bees liked to glue their frames together and it was always a mess separating and pulling them out. This year we don't have that problem, the bees mostly just build crosscomb out of wax which is easy to remove.
Everything seems to be going well. As the flowers start blooming and the bee population increases I bet we see beeswax and honey production go way up!
