What's Blooming?

A swarm! My friend Deb unfortunately had one of her hives swarm this month. It spent a day in a tree near her house but it was 30+ feet off the ground so she couldn't reach it. It disappeared the next day. Who knows where it ended up.
Fortunately our girls have stayed right where they belong and are still hard at work. About two weeks after adding the second hive body, the bottom deeps are almost full of honeycomb and the tops are almost half full. I'm getting better at finding the queens now too which is reassuring. My second bee field day is tomorrow. We'll be working with the school hives and practicing management techniques with them as well as learning to identify signs of different diseases and problems. The weather is getting slowly warmer and the days are longer and the garden is exploding with flowers. Hopefully the bees are enjoying them as much as I am.

Double Decker!

Wow, our girls have been busy! Cam and I did an inspection on Saturday and saw lots of progress. We had Jon standing by, taking notes on the dry-erase board so I could log it into my hive record later. Both hives looked very similar on the inside: they had four frames packed full of eggs, brood, capped brood, pollen and even honey. They also had two frames that were half full of honeycomb. That means it's expansion time! So we went back out there today and added a second hive body to each hive. We'll check them again on Saturday after my bee class. Our first baby bees should be emerging from their cells by the weekend and the hive populations should start increasing rapidly after that. Our first 'Spokanite' bees!