On Saturday it was time for our first check of the bees. Edric and my mom were my helpers and they both had a lot of fun. Edric was really excited to wear the bee suit and let the bees land on him. When I opened up the hive I saw the 5 frames from the nuc but then a number of bees also working on the three empty frames that I had hung. I pulled my first frame out of the middle of the brood box and started looking for the queen. My mom thought she saw one but then realized it was a drone, however just a minute later I found Queen Adelaide climbing all over my side of the frame. She was moving right along and it was good to actually spot her. We checked the rest of the frames and I discovered that the nuc frames all had plastic foundations which I’m not a fan of, but I will work on slowly working those out of the hive so that they can have all natural comb. On the frames that were fresh they had them decently built out for only being 6 days old. It was really neat to see. I decided to add a second brood box and pulled one of the full frames up to help encourage the bees to start building them up there. I put the feeder back on and the bees were set for another week. I have been learning so much just sitting out by their hive watching them come in and fly out full of pollen.
Hiking Mommy 