Today Pattie and I finished a hive inspection that we started yesterday. To our surprise, our bees had already started to gather nectar and produce honey. We harvested (3) frames today and added new frames for them to fill back up.
We also discovered some queen cells which can be seen in the first photo. That means that our present queen is getting up there in age or has been injured and the colony is preparing for a new one to take her place.
I will be setting a swarm trap to catch my own bees, if they decide to split the hive and look for a new home.
So, it looks to be another exciting year of managing some of God's amazing creatures.
In photo #1, you will notice the large cells protruding from the bottom of the frame. These are the queen cells. They are larger than the worker or drone cells. Queen cells are very special, because you only find them when a new queen is being prepared. We have never seen them in our hive until today. We may soon have a new healthy queen who lays thousands of eggs a day. A healthy queen means a healthy colony - which means LOTS OF HONEY - which we love!
The second photo shows some brand new comb which our bees produced this year. They build this comb very fast when there are good resources available to them for it's production.
Click on images to enlarge
Now, isn't that some pretty comb? Send my bees a text message to encourage their continued good performance in their hive! Even bees need a little encouraging word from time to time. ;^D
Special thanks to my faithful assistant and photographer (Pattie)!
