02 Jun 2010
Growing Pains
As you can see, the ladies now have a duplex of their very own. When I saw that they'd fully drawn out about 6 of the 10 frames in the bottom super last week, I figured I'd have to install a second super on my next visit. A week later, they'd finished drawing out 9 of the 10 frames. Whew, close call!
I swapped the one undrawn frame in the bottom super with a drawn frame next to it, so the bees would be more likely to draw it out instead of just moving upwards. Now they have tons of space into which they can expand their brood nest. Get to it, ladies! The sooner you build up the colony, the sooner I can start pilfering your hard-earned honey!
My other task this past weekend was dealing with an unfortunate mold infestation that started in the sugar syrup in my hive top feeder and on the inside of the outer cover over the feeder. I washed off the cover and the feeder with bleach and water, then rinsed them and put them back. All the syrup I'd fed the bees the week before was gone, so I poured in another gallon. This time, however, I mixed a teaspoon of bleach in with my 1:1 sugar syrup to keep the mold down.
I'm told by one of my local mentors that bees can handle even two teaspoons of bleach per gallon of syrup, but since I wasn't being meticulous about scrubbing everything out after the cleansing, I decided to play it safe. Hopefully this'll do the trick, and I will never have to bleach the bees again. The great and terrible Clorox genocide was a nightmare, as bees kept flying into my bleachy cleaning water and dying in there faster than I could get them out. I lost a dozen or two, easy. Ladies, ladies, I can only protect you from yourselves up to a point!
There's a lot of beautiful capped brood in my hive, in a perfect brood pattern curving up from the bottom center of the frames. My first new bees should start emerging in the next week or so. Since my queen came from a different hive than the rest of bees, and I have no idea what sort of drones she may have sown her wild oats with, the new bees could be quite different from the ones I started out with.
The bees I have right now are astonishingly gentle. Even with a laying queen and improving morale, even with my clumsiness and unfortunate beeslaughter by bleaching, they haven't stung me once. They're just pretty chill, is all. But as they die out and are replaced by bees from different genetic stock, will hive remain as calm? I just don't know. My queen was also bred for gentleness, but only time will tell.
I'm fascinated by the idea that my hive's personality could shift drastically over the next few weeks, as the new queen's offspring take over. Who knows who it might become?
My brother came up to visit the ladies with me this time. Everyone looks great in a beekeeping veil!