Super!

I checked on the hives again yesterday and today. Lately it's been so hot that I'm doing them just one at a time. Even if it's only in the 70s, I'm dripping sweat after a half an hour! Between the jeans tucked in and taped to my rainboots and the bee suit/hood/gloves, I overheat in the blink of an eye. And you can't wipe the sweat out of your eyes when you have the hood on. Yikes! It's like being in a sauna.
Anyways, the bees seem to be pretty happy. The garden is in full swing with all kinds of plants coming into bloom. I can see the worker bees coming into the hives with tons of pollen on their legs.
Hive #1 seems to outpacing #2 at this point but I have no idea why. We have honey supers on both hives that are filling up fast. I added a second one to hive #1 today. I pulled the frames of drone comb from both hives and replaced them with new ones. Those will go into the freezer to kill the mites that prefer the drone brood. Sorry boys! I'll keep rotating them as they fill up to keep pulling mites out of the hive. In theory this will decrease the mite load on the worker bees. That sounds better to me than using poisonous miticides! Stay tuned to hear how well this works... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the hives stay healthy and that I can harvest a little honey this summer. I'm just dying to taste it!

Almost Summer

The hives are two months old now! I have no idea how many bees we have now but it's a lot more than when we started. Both deeps are full and they're drawing out the honeycomb in the supers. They're about halfway done with that job already! I finally got some pictures of the hives opened up do you can see the bees on the frames. Aren't they cute?? Most of the bees that came in April are gone now (they only live a couple of months) so all the ones you see have been born in our backyard. Everyone except for the two queens of course.
You can see them zooming around in the air from the kitchen windows. They're collecting pollen and nectar like crazy. The locust trees are just about done blooming but the mock orange is just starting up and I hear that it's one of their favorites.

Bee Food

My huge beauty bush in the backyard is blooming! It's amazing, the biggest one I've seen in town. It's covered with bumble bees and honey bees both. There's plenty of flowers to go around!

Super!

It was finally time to add the honey supers last week! The bees had almost completely filled up both hive bodies and needed room to store the honey.  I went out on a sunny day last week and almost keeled over from the heat!  It was only in the low 70s but the jeans/boots/jacket/hood combo was sweltering!  I had to take a break in the middle.  What am I going to do in the summer??

Taa daa!  The hives with the supers on top.  Ideally, the extra honey goes on top which is harvested at the end of summer.  The "brood" or baby bees go in the bottom and the food is stored in the middle box.  Of course, the bees may not have the same plan as I do yet.  The queens are going all over the place, laying eggs wherever they find an empty cell.  The worker bees are doing the same thing with the pollen so it's all mixed up right now.  My job is to rearrange the frames periodically and put the brood in the bottom and move the food to the top.  Hopefully they'll get the hint.   Having extra space on the top in the supers should help.

Here's a picture that Cam took when I was working with the hives.   Pretty hard to see anything!  I kept yelling at him to get closer but he wasn't cooperating.  I will try to take some pics with my phone the next time I'm working with the bees.

Getting ready to add the supers.