Inspection3

Another inspection. The weather was not great: temperature in the low 20s and occasional direct sunshine as the clouds jostled and chased each other across the sky. The big difference with this inspection is that I took Nat, my wife. This was mainly for her experience: she'd been impressed how keen I've become on beekeeping and wanted to see what the fuss was about. Also, she was there as photographer, smoker operator and note taker. It's very useful having spare smock, veil and gloves. Although Nat was a total novice at handling bees and had not done any courses nor read any books, I knew that she'd be useful and calm throughout. Neither of us were to be disappointed with the inspection. As a reminder, the colony is operating on a brood-and-a-half and has one honey super on.

First the honey super. The comb was little more drawn out that when I saw it during the last inspection 8 days ago: the centre frames perhaps had half-drawn out comb; the outer frames little. Not much to see there so I just pulled out one frame for Nat to see the comb and the bees working it, and we moved on to.....

...the brood super. This was full of honey (mainly capped), pollen and brood (mainly capped). All except the very outer frames had brood on. As a general note, the bees seemed a little calmer than last time, though neither inspection took place in great weather.

In the main brood box the bees were also going about their business in normal fashion. Honey, pollen and brood was present throughout. The brood was of all sorts: capped, large uncapped, smaller uncapped and lots of eggs. Great! Although I again failed to see the queen but the presence of all those eggs is good enough for me at this stage. Except that, of course, if I were able to see her I could then mark her and then make her easier to see her in future. The eggs were mainly towards the rear of the brood box with older larvae towards the front.

Nat had been snapping away on the camera throughout, but at this stage stopped to help me swap in a new stand as I lifted the brood box and floor. I'd had an old stand there before (someone else's which had been on site for years and belonged to an old WBC hive so not really quite right). My new stand looks much better since it matches the hive cosmetically and also has a landing board from which the bees can walk straight up into the hive.

The picture below is a great one to show a variety of cells in the comb. On the left is uncapped brood. Notice the white "C" shapes - they are bee larvae, and relatively well developed ones too. In the centre of the picture is capped brood. The cells look yellowish when they are capped and are every so slightly raised. Inside is capped larvae of worker bees. (Capped drone brood cells stand much higher above the comb (and are also generally located on the lower parts of the frame and in fact often on free standing comb on the bottom of the frames).) On the right hand side of the photo is capped honey, recognisable since it is very pale in colour and very flat against the comb. This picture is somewhat typical, though the frame should actually be rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise to show the brood at the bottom and honey at the top. The other slightly atypical thing to note is that there is usually some cells of pollen stored in the area between honey and brood. There seem to be empty cells in this location in this photo, so perhaps the bees have left them vacant and are in fact finding it hard to find pollen.

Overall, it seems that the bees have not expanded to rapidly outgrow the hive space as I feared they might. At this stage the brood-and-a-half seems perfectly good for them, at the moment at least. They are still using the brood super to lay, but the ratio of brood to honey there is lower than in the main brood box itself even on the centre frames and certainly on the outer frames. It's just a shame that they are not putting honey into the honey super. To be honest this doesn't really concern me, though if they did it would be a nice sign they were thriving.

The remaining work on site was to sort out the positioning for the new colony before it arrives this evening. I've chosen a place which arguably is not the best, but it's quite close to the first colony which will reduce the impact on the site as a whole. It's quite shady, though, but on balance I think it OK.

And what did Nat think? Very excited and interested by the experience, and she's offered her help for future inspections when possible. It'll be good to have a helper when more experienced hands are not available. (Speaking of which I must get some in, but more on that later.)