I'm still not allergic!

In hindsight, opening the hives between thunderstorms may have been a poor idea, but I really wanted to add a third box to Jo before she totally ran out of room in the second. On Saturday morning, I sprayed the foundation with syrup, then opened Jo to give the girls more space. Immediately, there was an angry buzz with half a dozen guards head-butting me and stinging me three times! Good news: I'm still not horribly allergic to apitoxin. I did have a quick peak at one of the frames and found eggs, so they're not queenless, they're just not as calm as Meg.

Today I had another look under the covers and while Jo was much more docile, there still seemed to be more angry guards than in Meg when I had a look. I suspect it has something to do with the much slower buildup Jo has experienced, or maybe Jo's queen is just a little hotter than average.

I've got another box of embedded frames ready for each hive, and I've wired another 20 or so. My dad's hives aren't quite as far along as Meg as they're only half done with their fourth box, but they've been collecting nectar like crazy. It's almost surreal (and slightly hazardous) to stand in the middle of their flight paths and watch/hear them zipping past -- a bit like going into hyperspace in Star Wars where each star sounds like a Formula 1 racecar!

Nectar Flow!

Meg and Jo both exploded this week -- Meg's hard at work on her fifth box (4th is 100% drawn out, fifth went on a bit late last Sunday), and Jo is just about done with her second and will receive a third tomorrow morning! I guess that means the nectar is finally flowing -- I just wish I could throw GPS trackers on all the girls to see where they're finding the best flowers!

I noticed that both hives are a bit more touchy than usual -- especially Meg. It could have something to do with the weather, but I suspect that they're moving into "protect the honey" mode and my days of playing with the girls sans veil may be limited for the year.

As for the picture, in my last inspection I noted that I'd put a quarter bucket of scrap comb in the top of Meg so they could clean up all the sticky honey -- they didn't just clean it up, they reworked it into a single mass and attached it to the side of the bucket!

Low Nectar Flow

As my first year with bees, I'm not entirely sure what to expect, so Jim's blog has been invaluable. He's been expecting a strong nectar flow from pollen and basswood, but his latest blog post suggests that he's not seeing it yet either.

That would explain why my bees are making so little progress right now -- they're significantly slowed down as they have to draw out honeycomb before they can put nectar in it, but I've been expecting at least SOME faster progress when the local flowers start producing good quantities of nectar.

http://naturesnectar.blogspot.com/2010/06/my-local-nectar-flow.html

Moving Ahead Slowly

On June 10th, I added a fourth box to Meg since she was about 70% done with the third box. I noticed a lot of burr comb, but didn't have time to take care of it as it started sprinkling in the middle of my inspection.

Jo is still lagging about half done with her second box. I'm just hoping we can build up enough to last through the winter, but worst case, I've got some good drawn comb to start with next year.

On June 20th, I went through all the frames in Meg scraping off burr comb. Overall it wasn't horrible, just a bit of drone comb between boxes except for one frame where the bees had started a second layer parallel to the foundation on one side. After eating a bit myself, I put the honey and brood-filled wax on the top cover for the bees to clean up -- within a couple minutes there were hundreds of girls happily lapping up honey with their cute red tongues!

I stopped feeding Meg as I think the hive has just about stopped taking syrup, but I'll keep feeding Jo since that hive has a long way to go, a much lower population, and seems to still take syrup even if at a lower rate than before. Jo is still only around half done with her second box, so I'll wait a bit longer before adding a third.