Moose Manor Hives Inspection

7/16/2013

This year we embarked on our first bee adventure. We bought 2 complete hives and one package of Carniolan bees from our good friends at AzureB in Marbury, MD. The single leg on these homemade hive-stands makes it easier to keep out hive pests like ants and beetles by giving them only one route which we can guard by wrapping it with tape (sticky side out) and liberally applying cinnamon at the base. They're also tall enough to make it comfortable to manage the bees with out a lot of bending and, most importantly, to keep skunks from scratching and eating bees at night.

We also ordered a nuc of Russian Bee's from Pristine Valley Farms in Harford County, MD in order to try out two different races of bee's and see which overwinters better. Eventually, I suspect we'll end up with just one race and we understand that there's a possibility that it will be a hybrid of the two. All I really care about is making sure I have strong, healthy bees that are sustainable without chemicals and thrive in my specific ecosystem.

Here's the photojournal of our recent hive inspection to see how all the ladies have been doing so far:

Carniolan Hive. (Package installed in April 2013) The girls started building honey comb on top of the lower frames and attached it to frames directly above so I had to cut it off. Thankfully, it wasn't a lot of new honeycomb so it didn't make much mess. You can see them collecting the open honey to fill up the brand new empty comb they've build on one of the other frames. I inverted the frame with cut away portion (to stop it dripping) and put it in the bee yard for the girls to gather up.

Carniolan Hive. Brood frame looks good. I made a bit of a bee-space violation and let them get away with building some super fat comb between the frames but so far each frame is seperate. The Carnie girls were super calm just humming and crunching away getting their work done.

Caronolian Hive. (Honeycomb inverted) Here's a shot of the removed portion of that beautiful bunch of honeycomb the Carnie girls built. This is the bottom of an empty upper frame in the super above. I hated to ruin such beautiful work but it was necessary to remove this small portion to access the main brood space. Here you're looking at the bottom of the mostly empty frame which I've turned upside down to keep the honey from running out. I left it nearby for the bees to re-collect and put in new comb located in a more appropriate portion of the hive.

Russian Bee Hive Inspection. Looking great 2 weeks after nuc installation.

Russian Hive. A well packed hive of bees. You can almost feel the vibration of this healthy hive in your chest when you stand close. Beautiful sight, sound, and sensation!