Argh! There's a bee in my suit....

..get it out....argh....oh my god I'm a gonner......

Actually there WAS a bee in my suit, or so I discovered after the inspection. So, how did it go? Pretty well, like this.....

My plan for the inspection was this: open up the hive and check it out making sure the colony is OK; very little likelihood of need for extra kit in there; hopefully mark the queen (had the new pen primed and ready, together with the queen cage). I spent extra time cranking the smoker up (lots of crinkly cardboard packing at the ready, and load of thick twigs) and suited up. It was a late inspection: after a really hot week (30 plus) it had been cooler today (23) but the evening was sunny enough.

Throughout the inspection the bees seemed pretty animated and angry despite quite liberal smoking: perhaps I had them open too long, or perhaps they recognised my amateur sytle. Remember that I have one honey super (10 frames) and brood-and-a-half (12 frame brood box plus 10 frame brood super, let's call them). Top to bottom, first is the honey super. The bees were beginning to draw this out, but barely. Some were working on every frame, but only the centre one was starting to look a little like proper comb, barely. I did not even bother to take the frames out, but moved on in the inspection. Next the brood super. What a great job the bees had done there. Every face of every frame was drawn out and all filled in one way or other save the front face of the front frame. There was lots of uncapped brood, mainly in the rear frames 2-6 (counting from the back), and honey on the other frames, much of which was capped. There was less pollen that I had expected, though. The inspection was already taking a while....next the brood box. It was fairly stuck together, but the hive tool came in very handy. Again, the front face of the front frame was unfilled (though built out) but the rest of the frames were packed. Clearly the queen had been hard at work, laying from the back first. Lots of larvae and eggs were present: capped larvae towards the rear of the hive, then uncapped further forward, then eggs towards the front. In fact frames 7-11 (again counting from the back) all had eggs, and lots of them too. These front frames I clearly saw were in their second generation of brood: the comb was darker/dirtier and I remember it being filled with capped brood last time rather than eggs - wow - this colony is really up and running!

Again I wondered about the apparent low incidence of pollen throughout. I saw some drone brood on the underside of some of the frames. I did not see any queen cells, though to be frank I could have paid more attention to this. And she, the queen, was illusive again, though spotting and marking her had been more of an aspiration than an objective. Overall the brood box was pretty gummed up and I do now see that putting 12 frames in there was perhaps a mistake - I can see that 11 frames and a dummy board may have been better / easier to manage. At least they have the extra space through that extra frame, though. I do wonder about that extra space and whether they would rather be in a double brood box since in the whole brood-and-a-half space there seem to be very few unused cells. I have the kit for this now, so it's just a matter of judging it and managing it.

How did the smoker do (see my comment on it running out in my first inspection)? Wow! It went really well. I'd stoked it up with many larger twigs and cardboard packing and it kept going right through my inspection (I had fed in the occasional twig) and in fact way afterwards so I had to put it out.

And the bee in my suit? Yes: as I unzipped my veil from my smock-top I looked down inside and there was one of the girls calmly crawling towards my neck to say hello. I flicked her off to then feel the crawl of another across the back of my neck. I am proud to say I did not freak out but ran a notepad across the area and flicked her in front of me. Phew, but no panic. I do wonder whether the smock I have is good enough - perhaps I should bite the bullet and go with the suit instead. One more incident like that and I will.

That's it! The bees are doing really well. Very prolific. Very productive. The queen still eludes me, but I am not concerned. Next inspection in a week.