Adding a honey super (medium)

Bob R. offered to walk through a hive inspection with me today (we got rained out at a first attempt over a week ago). I wanted the opportunity to get his seasoned eyes and ears on my hive to be sure I hadn't been overlooking anything here in my first year. It was an interesting contrast in the two of us ... here I am the novice, in long pants, long sleeved shirt, bee jacket, mid arm length gloves, hat and veil ... Bob is in a tee shirt ... carrying a half jacket with a hooded veil "in case they get ornery". He never got stung.

We went through both deeps, pulling each of the 20 frames and never spotted the queen. We saw lots of examples that she has been around ... lots of eggs in many many frames at both levels of deeps, lots of brood too. She must have moved faster than we were able to spot her. The hive looked great to me, and Bob concurred. Many frames had lots of capped honey on them. We removed one cell - was it a drone cell or was it a queen cell? Better not take chances of a swarm, so Bob suggested that we just remove it by cutting it out (which we did). Bob gave me lots of little tips as we went along ... like leave the top cover flat on the ground so you have a nice surface to place the deep on ... and leave the smoker on the ground in a direction that the wind is coming from so that the smoke will continue to drift over the hive during your inspection

In the end, we ended up moving a few of the outside frames that weren't fully comb developed into the middle of the deeps so that the bees would draw out the comb for either honey /pollen storage or brood development. We ended up putting all back together, placing the queen extruder on, adding a medium honey super, and removing the syrup feeder. He also showed me a trick of propping up the top cover by 1/4 to 1/2 of an inch by placing 4 or 5 stones on the inner cover/under the top cover. Placing slightly larger stones in the back allows for a sloping arrangment of space and air circulation.

Some other observations:

• I found a very large black beetle dead on the floor of the hive ... amazingly large - obviously the bees took care in being sure this one did no damage to the hive.


• We watched in amazement on many of the frames - particularly the lower deep - where a bee was communicating with her bee dance. It was quite amusing.


• We removed the bottom board and Bob pointed out a single mite there ... something I will continue to keep my eyes open for
  
• We did find a few obvious drone cells at the bottom of a few frames.

I am thankful for Bob being here today. His tips and tricks will help me in the future. His vote of confidence in the hive reassures me that my observations are spot on. His calmness and control without hat/veil/jacket/gloves is encouraging - although I am not yet sure I am ready to forego my safety equipment. I did remove my hat and veil after I had the hive all buttoned up. I was still standing next to the hive. It was hot and my head/face had been sweating - all of a sudden I first heard and then felt bees landing on my head ... they were just capturing and taking the moisture off my head. No worries.

It was a rewarding early evening hive inspection - thank you Bob!

Although I go out and check on the bees at least once on a daily basis, I usually just observe them from a distance of 5 or 6 feet to the front of the hive entrance as they fly in and out. As long as I see lots of movement, and as long as I see forager/worker bees returning with pollen bags full, I know that things are "OK" inside the hive. The bees would not be bringing food into the hive for storage unless there were good signs of egg laying and bee development going on. The hive population must really be exploding about now given that I added the second deep on May 20th.I did remove the entrance reducer altogether on the 13th of June to give them more feedom to go in and out.

So it's been a while since I have been inside the hive. I decided last night about 7:30 to take a look. And although my smoker died out again on me midway through the quick inspection (I was in the hive for less than 10 min total) I was able to look at the top brood chamber and see lots of eggs, lots of larvae, and I found the queen again. There are a lot of bees inside, all actively working frames. As I pulled a frame or two, I'd peer inside down to the first level, and those are also full of bees. Life appears to be going good for this group of bees in this hive. I plan on purchasing a third deep this weekend, and adding it as soon as I have it painted up. I'm lead to believe by a local friend Bob, who has been beekeeping for more than 20 years, that this hive appears strong enough to get to a third deep before I worry about a queen excluder and a honey super for my reaping of honey. He also recommends going into the winter with 3 deeps ... his advice I will follow.

I tried to take a video of my actions yesterday, and although I might impove the angle/perspective better in the future by mounting the camera on a tripod, this seems to work OK by setting it down on my spare hive. I like this little Flip camera - seems to work well.

[difficulties in getting this video attached]

A warm muggy Sunday (6/6/10) T storms and rain off and on all day.