On May 31st we checked our hives again. Bethany and Abigail were the only two to check the hives, while Mom took pictures.
Here we are beginning the hive inspection.
Here is Abigail showing Bethany one of the frames from Bethany’s hive. We often check two people to one hive. This makes it a possible for two frames to be looked over at once.
The bees had just begun to build out this frame in their second deep.
Here we are inspecting two frames at once. I am holding the frame that was in the hive just before the frame Bethany is pulling out.
Here is Bethany looking at a frame. If you look at the side of the frame toward the ground, you can see dark spots that are brood.
We sprayed the frames in the upper deep if they were not filled out. This encourages the bees to build comb on them.
At the bottom of this frame were queen cells.
The queen cells were empty. This means either the queen had not laid an egg in them or they were for practice. These frames were in Abigail’s hive. All of the queen cells were empty. If the queen cells had had eggs in them we would have split the hive.
The bees were building into the second box really well during this hive check.
Abigail