On Saturday we did our second check of the bees to see how they were doing. Paxton and Coppelia were my helpers. I was able to use just the jacket part of the “one size fits most” bee suits that we have and with some creative safety pins make them work for both of them. Clint was my other helper and I managed to not get a photo of him, mostly because he was taking most the photos. The bees were looking really good. They had started to build out some comb in the top brood box I put on which was good to see. It is fascinating to see how they work together to make scaffolding with their bodies for the comb to be built out on. We actually found Queen Adelaide checking out the new comb up in the second brood box. In the bottom box I found one frame that had very little brood in it but had some pollen in it and some stored honey. It was one of the original frames that we got with the nuc that was plastic. I am trying to keep plastic out of the hive as much as possible, and so since this was one fairly empty of brood I pulled it and replaced it with an empty frame so the bees could build and not use the plastic. We put the hive back together and then examined the frame I had removed. We all tried a little bit of the honey which everyone enjoyed. I did have a couple upset in tears that we were going to have to get rid of the frame which meant that the bee larvae would die but they did understand that in the long run getting the plastic out was a good plan. It will be a number of weeks before I remove the next frame as I had quite a few tears to dry from my soft sweet hearts. Clint even said when we were all done, “that was actually pretty good”, he’s been my most nervous about all of this but I think he actually is beginning to enjoy it (even if just a bit).
Hiking Mommy 