I found a beetle in the hive today. You can see him in the honeycomb in the center of the picture. The bees would not let him leave that cell. Every time he tried to get out of it a bee would push him back to the bottom of the cell.
I read online that all hives have beetles in them but strong hives can keep them under control. I hope that my hive is strong enough to keep them under control.
Its the beginning of September in this video. It looks like the bees are starting to encourage the drones to leave the hive. There are a lot more drones by the entrance than usual today. I couldnt get video of it but when I looked in the window there were worker bees clinging to the drones and trying to drag them to the entrance.
Some more pictures of the addition and the progress in there. It is harder to see in this one. Katie wishes that Jim had built this with a window in it so that she could see what is going on every day.
You can see them crossing the comb from one frame to the other. I have to do something about that but not quite sure how to do that yet.
It looks like they have these bars all filled up with honey.
Pretty unbelievable that they have done this much since I got them.
The hive is getting closer to being full of comb now.
Jim is demonstrating the process that we have come up with to expand the hive. If the queen ends up laying eggs in the added super we may try to split the hive.
I don't even get this kind of pressure at work.
The completed addition.
We thought that the bees were getting ready to swarm because they started hanging (literally) out on the outside of the hive.
Turns out that they just do this in the summer when it gets too hot inside the hive. Some of them hang on the side of the hive to help keep the inside of the hive cooler.
It didn't take them long at all to fill up the rest of the hive with comb. You can see where they made the combs on the right side of the hive much bigger. That is where I spaced the top bars apart so that the bees would have room to go into the super that we put on top of the hive.
Looking through the top cover of the super on top of the hive.
Got stung for the first time a couple of days ago. It had been really hot (around 90 or better) so I had propped the top cover of the super up a little bit thinking that it would let a some of the hot air flow out of the hive. When I went to check on the hive and see what was going on in the super as soon as I lifted the top cover one came out and got me in the hand. Looking back I bet that they were guarding it like it was another entrance to the hive. However, the next time I went to peek in there I did use my smoker and had gloves on just in case. No problems since I stopped propping the cover up though. The next hot spell we had I just left them alone and everything was fine.
One of our bees on the clover in our yard. I found that having bees is a great excuse to mow your lawn less. The clover in the yard becomes food for the bees and an excuse to not mow the lawn.
For awhile the bees would come to the pool and drink from the drops of water on Katie.
The bees don't even mind if you have a hot dog fire near the hive.
