Week 7 Activities

On a hot and muggy Sunday, I opened up the hive for my week 7 inspection. Time has flown by quickly, and I’m amazed how quickly Large Marge and crew have built up the hive. The 3rd super I added last week had a lot more comb on it than I expected which is great. I was a bit worried that I might have to put the feeder back on since sometimes bees are reluctant to draw out comb on new plastic foundation, but the frames are progressing nicely. This tells me there is still good nectar flow around Austin.

The 2nd super is where I placed the Beetle Blaster. You can see me below inspecting the trap and noticing the lack of blasted beetles. Either the jingle has lied to me, or I don’t have enough beetles in the hive that need blasting. I did notice a few running around which were promptly squished, but hopefully the girls are keeping them under control.

Bees store both pollen and honey in cells. Below is a good shot of cells filled with pollen surrounded by uncapped honey. Technically, it is not even honey yet but nectar that hasn’t been cured meaning the water content is still too high to be considered honey.

I also thought I found a swarm cell, but I believe it is just some burr comb which refers to bits of random wax combs built basically where you don’t want it to be built. I scraped it off my handy dandy hive tool. This is also a great photo showing a frame of capped brood which are baby bees in their final stage of becoming a worker.