Hive Inspections: Queens, Queens Everywhere (And Rain)

   It's been raining... a lot. For anyone not in Florida, I don't think you can truly grasp our levels of rainfall. We may as well have had a tropical storm sitting over this part of the State for the last week. Normally that's not a big deal. It's nice to stay in and read a book to the relaxing sound of the rain. However, it wasn't so fun now that I'm keeping bees. The girls were rearing and ready to go each morning, stretching their wings while clustering at the hive entrance and zooming out over the lake.

   However, almost like clockwork, at 10am it would start drizzling. The foraging bees would all start returning, and soon enough there was heavy rain coming down. During the worst of the flash-rains there would be bees flying through rain so thick, and consisting of such giant raindrops, that there wasn't even 100ft of visibility. Occasionally some would get shot down only a few feet from the hive, and one day I scooped at least 30 bees off of the ground and surrounding puddles. I'm sure they could get out on their own, eventually, but I was there to help them so I figured "why not?". Their delicate wings would get stuck to the ground by the surface tension of the water, so I picked them up instead of letting the toads have a buffet.

   Eventually, the rain would slack off or stop for short periods of time throughout the day. However, I'm sure the bees can sense the change in barometric pressure and know that the rain isn't finished yet. So at every opportunity they would just swarm the feeder jar on top of the hive. Both patio hives went through full jars of syrup in 48 hours, and, one particularly rainy day, the larger of the two patio hives chugged 3/4 of a jar in one day!

  This was a pretty normal sight for every afternoon, bees all over the jar lid and others walking around below picking up any spillage. On the day that they chugged 3/4 of a jar, this entire area between the wood bars was practically swarmed by the bees. If they couldn't forage, then by golly they were going to do their best to empty that jar!

Casterly Rock

   Speaking of the patio hives, I've decided upon a name for the most recent feral hive, Casterly Rock. These are the girls that I had cut out from the giant tree pot, and this is their queen! She's a beautiful, dark scarlet and practically blood red. What a badass. If it wasn't for pulling frames of brood for the Dothraki to make a queen from, they'd be my #1 hive in terms of frames filled out + number of bees. They're definitely still #1 in population, but a bit behind Winterfell due to the frame borrowing. I have no doubt that they'll surpass Winterfell as soon as the constant rain slacks off. It probably helps that whenever they're out of syrup, I'll go and make them a fresh jar. Winterfell on the other hand is not being fed very often, and I've actually stopped feeding them, for the moment, in order to pull a frame of honey in the near future.

   If you're wondering why I'm so confident with Casterly Rock, just take a look at this frame. This is a thing of beauty right here! That whole top row of white is finished honey, the row of orange underneath is pollen/bee bread (a fermented mixture of nectar + pollen + bee enzymes) that is used to feed the young, the entire rest of the frame progresses from eggs in the empty looking cells, to young larvae, to mature larvae, back to young larvae, and then finally more eggs. I can't wait to see this frame all capped up. It's going to be an almost solid sheet of capped honey, filled cells of bee bread, and capped brood.
 

Notes: 

Pests: none, Brood: 5 frames (Eggs/Larvae/CappedBrood/Drone, another frame given to Dothraki) with solid laying pattern, Honey: 2 frames (Honey only), Syrup: 3 mason jars in one week

Dothraki

   FINALLY, the Dothraki have a Khaleesi (queen)! I knew that virgin queen from the other week had been stung to death! Doubts were starting to creep in that maybe she hadn't been stung, that maybe she was their victorious queen, but had been injured/gotten sick while on a maiden flight. Nope, that virgin queen had indeed been on the losing side of the May 2013 Khaleesi Thunderdome.

   Sorry for the poor picture quality by the way. I'll get a better picture in two weeks. I'm going to leave them as undisturbed as possible, that way the new queen will feel secure and be confident going full steam with egg laying. I didn't see any eggs today. However, queens start out laying slowly, and ramp up their rates of egg laying as they mature. I also didn't inspect her frame (the last frame actually) all that thoroughly, because I didn't want to spook her into flying off.

   Lots of honey built up by these girls, lots of pollen stored away, and lots of drawn out comb (mostly thanks to pulling from Casterly Rock). Funny thing is that two days ago I had pulled a full frame of brood + eggs from Casterly rock to give to the Dothraki. I had inspected this hive for a queen and hadn't found one. So apparently she must have been out on her maiden flight or I simply hadn't found her. No clue. I was extremely surprised to see her today!

   The Dothraki are set to start exploding in productivity. I did see three hives beetles in there however... I attribute that to having low numbers until only recently. Two of them were crushed, and the third one escaped behind a frame before I could put down the frame that I was inspecting. I'll get that little bastard next time.

Notes: 

Pests: Three hive beetles (two dead, one escaped deeper into the hive), Brood: 4 "Super" frames (Larvae/CappedBrood), Honey: 1 frames (Honey and Pollen), Syrup: 2 mason jars in one week

Ren

She thinks hive inspection day is great. It means at least an hour of hunting lizards and running around. Time for another nail trim too!

Wildlings

   These girls are doing really well. They've been stockpiling honey and pollen for entire time that their queen was maturing. Pictured above is a "free form" Super frame of 90% capped honey. It's tempting to steal a small piece to try it, but it's not worth setting them back at all. Not to mention that they've been fed syrup pretty regularly, so chances are it wouldn't taste very strong in comparison to legit honey.

   Speaking of feeding... I'm going to have to build a real hive stand for the bee yard. I noticed that they were draining their feeder rather quickly. Upon closer inspection there were some ants walking around near the entrance. After pulling the feeder jar out I could see a good twenty or so fire ants on and around the feeder. Argh I hate ants! They weren't invading the hive since there were cracks in the plastic feeder that they could fit through, so no problem there, but that's food for MY bees, not you ants!

   So how to fix that? It's pretty simple. I'm going to have to go pick up some 2x4s to assemble into a long frame with six legs (two on each end, two in the center), and sit each leg in a can of water & motor oil. That way the ants won't be able to cross the liquid and climb onto the legs of the stand. It's just going to take some elbow grease to make it happen.

   The Wildlings have also been drinking again (typical Wildlings), and have gone to work drunk. Look at this crazy comb that they've built. Pretty awesome to look at, not so awesome in terms of functionality and organization. I had to scrape it off with my hive tool and set the pieces at the hive entrance for them to clean out the collected nectar. Other than that though, great looking hive! I set them up with a Deep as their second stage, the first stage is a Super. Once they start filling out the top then I can change around the order, with the Deep on bottom and the Super on top. THEN I can move the queen into the Deep, with the queen excluder on top of it. That way the brood comb can hatch out completely, and the queen can continue laying down below. Once the brood comb in the Super is completely hatched out I can remove it completely, and put a second Deep on so that it goes Stage 1: Deep, Stage 2: Deep, and they'll have their full strength hive body. Everything else on top will purely be for clean honey production. 

Notes: 

Pests: One hive beetles (crushed), Brood: 5 frames (Eggs/Larvae/CappedBrood) with solid laying pattern, Honey: 2 frames (Honey only), Syrup: 1 mason jars in one week

Winterfell

   Winterfell has drones! How cool is that?! The one in the center of the picture with the fat abdomen, larger wings, and eyes similar to house fly is a drone. Just think of those massive eyes as the goggles of a fighter pilot. Their whole physiology is based around mid-air acrobatics in order to be the first to link up with a virgin queen. Even if afterwards their whole "situation" gets ripped out of their bodies. Afterwards they'll die... still a better love story than Twilight.

   Their feeder was removed from inside the second Deep and replaced with the last three frames. Other than that, I didn't bother them too much. They had spread well throughout the second Deep and had a good amount of surface area covered when I took the inner cover off. It seems the feeder encouraged them to start moving through the queen excluder too, since there was a bit of wax buildup on a few second stage frames. They still have three frames in the first stage to fill out, so I'm not too concerned about it. The main purpose of the second stage being put on this soon is to inhibit swarming. 

   Swarming is when the original queen takes off with half the hive to start a new hive, while the remaining bees raise a new queen to continue the original hive. Swarming will occur when they run out of space to expand, and feel "cluttered". So to avoid that it's best to add another Deep or Super on top when they've reached 7 frames. That gives the beekeeper plenty of leeway instead of waiting an extra two or three weeks, and then it's suddenly critical that the next stage is added immediately.

   I didn't do a thorough inspection of them, since that would require taking off the lightly populated second stage, taking off the queen excluder, and then going through the first stage. There is already one dead hive directly across from this one, on the next pallet over. That one has pretty much just been a beetle farm from the looks of it. If the covers are kept off for more than ten minutes then I'll start getting beetles flying over to land on the lip of the hives, it's disgusting. I'll be moving all of my hives to a different area of the property once the stands are finished. 

   Winterfell is strong enough now that there isn't much to worry about with them, outside of ant infestation and varroa. So they'll be fine to go for another week without invasive inspection. I did, however, see one beetle land at the entrance after placing a piece of nectar/honey-filled stray comb at the entrance for the girls to clean out. The smell must have attracted the beetle. Winterfell proved it's mettle though, with the guard bees blocking off the beetle from the entrance and chasing it up the exterior of the hive. I grabbed it as soon as I could and crushed it. 

Notes from gazing down through the queen excluder:

Pests: One hive beetle (crushed, attempted to enter by the front entrance, was blocked by guard bees and chased up the side of the hive box where it met it's fate), Brood: 6 frames (Eggs/Larvae/CappedBrood/Drone) with assumed solid laying pattern, Honey: 2 frames, possibly 3 by now (Honey only), Syrup: 1 mason jar in three days

   This has truly been an excellent week for the bees. Two new queens in two weeks, second stages added to both Wildlings and Winterfell, Dothraki having massive stores of bee bread for the new babies, and Casterly Rock being ready for a move to the bee yard where they will receive their second stage. I can finally sleep completely soundly without any stressing over queenless hives falling behind.

   Not just that, but a good friend of mine has decided to help me out with a logo for the upcoming wax products (lip balm, etc) and honey. I can't wait to show her design off! Exciting stuff! 

Hive Inspections Pt.2: Re-Re-Queening & My Face Is Over 9000

   The last week and a half has been pretty good for all of the bees, except for the Dothraki. They've been having some issues. Well, either that or they're being very secretive about how well they're doing.

   Upon last hive check, I discovered that their queen cells had hatched out. Also spotted was a potential virgin queen. This week though, there was no queen anywhere, and not just that. There were also a set of NEW queen cells, all of which had been sealed. Curiouser and curiouser.

   One thing that did come to mind was how last inspection's virgin queen was just so scrawny. It didn't even click that it was a virgin queen until a few days later. She was so tiny that, at the time, I had thought she was just a weird looking bee who had developed improperly. Just to be safe, I made sure to skip a full inspection on them to not spook her.

This Week: Dothraki

   As usual, Thursday morning I had gone outside with my coffee to watch them start their day. This time though, there was a small commotion at the entrance. Two bees were dragging another bee out. One bee turned back at the lip of the bottom board, and then the remaining bee flew her captive down to the bricks. The captive bee didn't seem to be struggling at all, and the worker proceeded to hop another six feet with her "cargo". That was a bit strange and caught my interest. Normally they'll dump their dead a max of two feet away. This must have been a special prisoner.

   It was a virgin queen. The first thing that highlighted her as a queen was the honey colored abdomen with a dark tip and no black bars. 

   The next indicator was the classic queen thorax. If you look at the picture above, on the left side is the virgin queen, and the right side is a worker bee. Notice how the thorax on the queen is much more pronounced, has a very light covering of hair (most of which can only really be seen from an angle), and has a defined circular shape in the front half. 

   Also take note of how different her primary (outermost) wings are compared to the worker's. The worker's wings are noticeably smaller in width for the last third of the main wing, while the queen's wings are more wasp-like and much more broad at the tips. I'll have to do some research on the wing details, but I would assume the queen's are for fast, agile aerobatics to avoid predators while on maiden flights and swarm migrations.

   As for the health of this virgin queen, I'm thinking she was in poor health and the workers killed her by stinging her. She wasn't convulsing, it was more of a twitching. The tiny joints in her legs were twitching and vibrating as if she couldn't control them, which says "venom" all over it.

  Honey bee venom is called "apitoxin" and is primarily an anticoagulant. According to Wikipedia's entry on apitoxin, two components of it are apamin and phospholipase. Apamin is a mild neurotoxin, and phospholipase is an enzyme that breaks down phospholipids (cell membranes). Both of these would certainly cause degradation of motor functions as characterized by this virgin queen's symptoms.

   I felt bad for her, but the bees know best. From my perspective I have no idea if there is something wrong with this queen, but from a bee's perspective there could be some glaring problem with this queen. She is a very pretty queen though, the picture doesn't do justice. I'm going to start a pin board for queens, and to create a sort of catalog of different queen colorations. Inevitably, there will be queens that produce very irritable bees. These will have to be killed so that the workers can raise a new, nicer queen. So instead of just pinching (squishing) them, it'd be neat to just collect them.

   Anyways, after taking some pictures I went back and inspected the hive. There were seven new queen cells, and a good number of capped brood had hatched out. The hive was very busy with workers packing away pollen for the new larvae and bigger population. Again, I didn't see a queen, and the current queen cells were all sealed up with no holes. So I really don't think that virgin queen had been stung to death by a resident queen from the previous hatching. Otherwise, the resident queen would have chewed through the new queen cells to kill the occupants.

  Just to be safe, I removed an unused frame of empty foundation from the Dothraki hive and traded a frame of brood from the new feral hive. After giving them the new frame they were closed up. I kept it all as brief as possible due to them already being stressed without a queen. I'm crossing my fingers for this next wave of queens, mostly so that I don't have to keep pulling brood from the new feral hive. 

Notes: All comb related indicators are considered false due to constant trading of frames, Brood: First set of queen cells hatched (observed ejection of dying virgin queen with failure of fine motor control), Second set of queen cells intact (x7)

New Ferals

   These girls are doing awesome! It's incredible just how quickly these bees haven taken to their new home. Not only are they exploding with activity at the first indication of the sun rise, but they're chugging syrup like mad!

   One way to tell how much construction going on inside a hive is by how how much dust they're tossing out. Like any busy construction site, there's wax scraps and debris to get rid of. Just look at he picture above. There's definitely some heavy lifting going on inside this hive!

   Prior to taking a frame of brood, these girls were at 7 frames of bees + comb. I was going to stack a second Deep box on top to make a two story hive body, but after the frame removal I think they're going to need a bit more time. This definitely calls for a trip to South Florida Bee Supplies for more frames and boxes though. They'll be moved to the bee yard this coming Friday.

   Oh! Almost forgot. The bottom board that's currently on them is a pretty old board that I bought on the cheap. It doesn't have proper spacing for an entrance feeder or for an entrance reducer. So I had to improvise a bit to come up with a good feeding solution.

   What I ended up doing was just taking two pieces of wood and forming a brace for the jar. Do not use this method with anything breakable unless the hive is very heavily sheltered. This area of the patio is sheltered on two sides by the house, so I felt comfortable using a mason jar for this. 

   This left a nice little sheltered area that channels the bees toward the jar. I also put a drop of honey right in front of it so that the bees could hone in on the smell. From everything I read, sugar syrup is odorless. That would explain why ants aren't sneaking in to steal syrup. Therefore the honey is pretty necessary, at least in a small bee yard. In a large bee yard there are just so many bees that it's almost guaranteed that someone will find the feeder by chance, and then call for backup. 

   Sure enough, they found it within 2 hours. Ever since then they've been chugging syrup like mad, emptying jars within 48 hours. It's pretty impressive! They also have drone cells which means they are in ace shape. A hive won't create drone cells unless they are very "happy" and unstressed.

Notes: 

Pests: Two hive beetles (both dead, assumed to have hitchhiked with cut-out comb), Brood: 5 frames (Eggs/Larvae/CappedBrood/Drone, one frame given to Dothraki) with solid laying pattern, Honey: 2 frames (Honey only), Syrup: 2 mason jars in one week

My Face

   This sting is really bringing out my Mandarin genes. When I asked friends to rate my Asian level on a scale of 1-9000; it was a conclusive 

   So again, wear your veils please! 

   This updated ended up being a lot longer than I expected. Mostly due to just interesting bees are, and how much change has been going on with these bees. Then again it's Spring, the best time to bee a bee! See what I did there? Tomorrow's post will be about the Winterfell hive mostly, as well as relocating my bees to a different part of the bee yard property and a cut-out from a trailer home. Stay tuned!

Edit: This post has now made some asian dating sites pop up in the Google ads hahaha. Silly Google.

Hive Inspections: Winterfell is feisty, Wildlings & Dothraki stage a revolution

Wow! Lots of changes in all three hives since last week. I did the inspections on Thursday in order to keep a solid inspection schedule. I feel this is very important when it comes to beekeeping. There are already so many distractions in modern life, and without committing yourself to a consistent schedule it will be very easy to fall behind. "Oh I'll just do it tomorrow, I just feel like watching tv today." could very well turn into more procrastination the next day. Just a few days is all it takes for a hive to fail cascade when at this small of a size. Now, don't take that to be scaremongering. If anything it should be encouragement to be a responsible caretaker of your bees, and you should already be super excited to visit them anyways! It's amazing enough to just watch them coming and going, and it's even more amazing to open up the hive to see what your bees have accomplished under your care!

Dothraki Hive

So it had been exactly a week from when the Dothraki bees got a new frame of brood for queen production. I inspected them first, since they're on the back patio and I don't even need to leave home for that. All of the queen cells are capped up, there's plenty of open honey with a good percentage already capped, and a really nice bouquet of pollen as well (which you can see in the very top picture). The pollen ranges from completely white, to pale yellow, to neon yellow, and then both dull orange and neon orange. There are foragers coming and going at a constant rate. I'd say about one in every eight bees is returning with their pollen baskets loaded. That's a pretty good ratio it seems, judging by the good stored in the hive. All of the queen cells have been sealed up as well. So in another week and a half or so, there should be a duel between the first two queens to decide who rules.

Apparently there was a drone cell on the frame that got transplanted from the Widling hive. I caught an awesome video of him getting kicked out. At least, I'm 75% sure it's a drone due to being a bit larger and darker, but it may have been a robber/stray bee as well. I didn't think to check at the time if it was a drone, since they don't have a current queen to have been producing them. The bees are also chugging syrup and building up lots of comb. I'm thinking they're taking the readily available food and only sending a few out as foragers due to smaller numbers, only one frame of brood, and it being riskier to collect nectar than it is to just hit up the entrance feeder.

I recommend watching in a high definition and expanded size

Notes: 
Pests: None, Bees: 2 frames of bees, Brood: 1 frame (L, CB, 4 sealed Replacement Queen Cells) with scattered laying pattern from Wildling queen, Honey: 2 frames, Pollen: mixed well among 3 frames, Syrup: 4 cups since last week


Wildling Hive

Last week when I pulled out the frame of brood I didn't look for the queen, but I did look for eggs. Looking for eggs is the fast way to check for a queen's presence. Eggs take on three positions as they mature: straight up on the first day, leaning like the Tower of Pisa on the second day, and then a very low lean on the third day prior to hatching. I saw eggs on day 2 so that means the queen was active in the last two days. No need to find her when she's been active that recently, not to mention that nature was getting ready to douse the hive and I in heavy rain. The first frame I pulled out had about 3/4 of one side with honeycomb, nice and heavy. Then as I went to set it back in I noticed a queen cell on the next frame. Upon checking the rest of the frames, the girls have not just 4 queen cells like the Dothraki, but SEVEN queen cells on just two frames of eggs. They were solidly capped cells, and they even made a crazy trio of queen cells. Of which each is only seperated by one non-functional cell from the other. That's sort of Hunger Games'ish, training and growing right next to the same people that will soon be trying to kill you.

I'm going to guess that stormy day last week with drizzling rain eventually coming down on the open hive + the inconsistent/scattered laying pattern of the original queen had the bees decide that it was time to replace her. Too many stresses at one time to tolerate an underperforming queen. Remember that this was the original queen from their old hive too, so she was already aged. Still strange though that both feral hives have fired their original queens. These bees have also consumed less syrup than the Dothraki hive. I'm guessing that it's most likely due to them having higher numbers of foragers and a good sized, productive farm 50ft away.

So within a day or two of the Dothrakis, these 7 queens should be thunderdoming it out to decide the victor in a brutal fight to the death. At least the first 2-4 will, the winner from that will then either face single challengers as the others hatch out, or the winner of the first fight will achieve victory quickly enough that she can go around the frames, killing the remaining queens as they lay helpless in their cells.

Other than that though, the hive is extremely busy. Lots of bees coming and going, about one in six bees has pollen. They've started building up another frame with comb, which makes up for the comb given to the Dothraki. Plenty of honey is in storage, not too much capped outside of some extra capping of their original comb. Then again they've only recently built up full sized cells on the foundation, the rest has been pre-existing comb that is rubber banded into empty frames. No big deal there, they're obviously happy and getting enough from the surrounding area that they aren't chugging from the feeder. There's also lots of brand new larvae (very small, compared to the fat larvae who are about to spin cocoons) and capped brood, so I'm not worried about numbers with this hive at all.

These bees were taken from a water meter cut-out and transferred into a Super sized nuc box, so that means they're on 3/4 sized frames. I didn't want them building wax down from the frames and attaching onto the bottom board. Not only would that be an incredible pain to get the screening cleaned out, but that'd be a ton of wasted wax for the girls when they need 100% material and labor efficiency. The day before I had gone down to South Florida Bee Supplies and picked up a Super box, as well as a nuc box (to be used as a hive trap), total of 30 frames (10 Super without foundation, 10 Deep without foundation, 10 Deep with foundation), another feeder, and some queen lure. So I spent about 10mins getting them transferred from the Deep and into the Super. The Wintefell hive was used as a table, which was actually a pretty poor idea.


Notes: 
Pests: One beetled that was imprisoned between a frame and hive wall (now dead), Bees: 3 frames of bees, Brood: 2 frames (L, CB, 7 Replacement Queen Cells, minute scattering of drone cells) with scattered laying pattern from previous queen, Honey: 3 frames, Pollen: mixed well among 4 frames, Syrup: 2 cups since last week

Winterfell Hive

Just look at that fresh, beautiful pure comb being built up on that foundation. That's frame seven, counting from the left side of the hive with entrance facing forward. These girls have frames two through seven built up with comb! They originally only had three frames built up with the fourth only just starting to be developed with small flecks of wax. All that in just three weeks. These girls are busy!

They also got a little fiesty haha. I hadn't given it much thought at the time, but all the vibrations and bumps from using the Winterfell hive as a table had gotten them nervous. It sounds obvious now, but it wasn't under 90F in the sun and I'm trying to be quick in order to not let the new wax get soft. Using only a veil for protection, I lifted the top off the Winterfell hive and started inspecting frames. I got two frames in and, due to sweat, had to suddenly tighten my grip on a frame in order to stop it from slipping. This jolted the frame and a single bee shot out like a little missile, buried herself in the top of my hand, and then grinded the stinger in deeper like she was at a club in Miami. Now, I'm no stranger to painful insect stings. Fire ants are the devil incarnate, but they're tiny and easy to brush away. It's a whole different thing when you have a full sized bee on your hand, and through the thoughts of "MOTHER OF GOD, IT BURNS!" it seems massive. It was definitely more of a surprise factor than a pain factor. I've never been stung before, so it was a bit more than I expected. That coupled with the visual of the bee on my hand, and the natural fight or flight instinct to run away from the danger, had me pretty surprised.

I did have a full frame of bees though, and dropping that would only make things worse. I lowered a corner so that it rested on another frame, then quickly (don't do that, be slow and smooth) pulled my hand back to brush the bee off. The fast movement + danger pheromone from the sting attracted three more bees right away. They started buzzing the stung hand as I lowered the frame back into the hive. After putting the frame back, I tucked the stung hand into my armpit to minimize the pheromone release and walked away from the hive, back to the van (about 30ft away).

For those that don't know, the stinger is coupled to a poison sac, that poison sac is attached to the bee's insides. The stinger is actually two serrated barbs, with the poison running down the channel between the two. Upon stinging, the whole package is torn out of the bee and the bee will die after a short time.
It really didn't hurt that much to be honest. It's just the newness of it and the reactionary "Oh crap!" of the primitive part of the brain. I ended up watching the poison sac pulsate for a few seconds because it was neat, then scraped it out with a credit card.

No time to lick wounds though, there's work to be done! Unfortunately my smoker was being a pain in the butt, so I just tossed on the jacket and gloves to get the rest done. The leather of the gloves will cover up the smell so that the bees don't get stressed from smelling the alarm chemicals.

Back at the hive, the next frame was the main honey frame. Wow this was heavier than I remembered. The outer side, which had nothing before, was now solid honey! As tempting as it is to steal some honey, they really need it to continue expanding at maximum efficiency. Plus I picked up some avocado honey from the supplier visit, can't wait to dig into that once my tongue heals up from it's hot sauce chemical burns. Long and unrelated story, but I tried the hottest sauce at Tijuana Flats, ow. Next up was what used to be a honey frame. The inner side now had eggs and capped brood. Just look at that solid laying pattern! That's what a healthy queen looks like, solid sheets of young from the same timeframe of laying. That really is beautiful to see, and photos just don't do it justice. Also, that funky looking, protruding circle cell is a drone cell. It's just being built off of a normal sized cell. Drone cells are good at this stage! This means they are happy with how much food they've built up, the health of the hive, and are confident in their queen. Drones (males) do no work whatsoever, they just sit around eating and being freeloaders. They do fly around looking for a queen to mate with, but if they're kicked out then they will go to a Drone Congregation Area to hang out with their bros.

This is the frame opposite of the one above, frame three. This frame has been freshly drawn out with wax and has a freshly laid sheet of eggs interspersed with a very small scattering of late stage larvae (the white filled cells). It looks like the queen passed over this frame while it was being made and decided a few cells were built up enough to lay few eggs. Five or six days later she came back to this frame, nodded her approval, and laid down a sheet of eggs. I'm actually really happy with how this picture came out and am probly going to make it my background. I love the angles and design of the comb, so precise but still organic. The lines formed in the corners make it a bit trippy too.

I did find the queen herself, not because I was looking for her, but just because there was a clump of bees on the side. She always has an entourage so I briefly scan any clump of bees I see. It's also just getting easier to pick her out by subconscious recognition.

Overall, I'm VERY very happy with these bees! Even if it was the "domesticated" bees that stung me first, and not the two feral (and supposedly more africanized) bees haha. I saw one hive beetle, but I'm pretty sure that's only due to having walked away with the cover off after getting stung. The beetle got contained to the lip of the hive by the bees, where I happily crunched it with my thumb. After crushing it in front of the guard bee assigned to it, the guard seemed to be like "Oh, hey thanks, time to take a break" and then just walked back into the hive without inspecting my thumb. It seemed pretty funny in the moment, maybe it was just being dehydrated, shot up with bee venom, and on an endorphin rush.


Notes: 
Pests: One beetle (dead, most likely from leaving cover off for a few mins and walking away), Bees: 5 frames of bees, Brood: 5 frame (E, L, CB, Drone) small number of drone cells, Honey: 3 frames, Pollen: mixed well among brood frames, Syrup: not currently being fed