Well, basically, our TBH Hive has windows, so we knew that the bees were building, and they had about 5 combs built. And we could see bees coming and going and carrying Pollen back in, so that is a good sign too. But periodically you should open them up, look for larvae, look for eggs, Look for capped cells and look for honey. We need to expand the area that they can build, when they fill up what we have given them. You should do this with some regularity so that you know "what is normal". We don't know what that regularity is. We also have heard that you shouldn't disturb them too much. You also should only open them up early morning, or evening, when the bees are calmer, and when it's not too windy/cold/ etc. Seems conditions were never just right.
But we got out there this morning. First going to the TBH. When Mike took off the lid, some of the top bars stuck to it and lifted up, but then fell off.... Not great. (My camera also wasn't focusing well.. so you get what you get.) One comb broke completely off, so we brushed the bees off of that and set aside to take back to the house with us. One comb was being built on the divider... not sure what to do about that. We didn't open up the other top bars to inspect them. We did scoop our and toss out a bunch of bees that had not made it through the installation.
Next we went out to the Warre Hive. This is the hive we have been messing up on since the foiled up installation! We installed the bees in the bottom box (after the package broke at the back porch). Then since we didn't have a well thought out feeder plan, we put another box on top and put the food in that, then realized that the roof did not fit on that box, so we put another box, and then the lid. We only put top bars on the lowest box, since that is where we wanted them to build. Well Duh! The bees build from the top. So now we have 5 beautiful combs built on the roof... No way to separate and inspect them without destroying them. And we have no windows on that hive, so we had to open it up and check it (we actually knew there were problems because a couple days after installation we had gone down and had to open up the hive to check/refill the food... We found them building on the top but did not know what to do. We did however move the food out of the hive, so we could access and fill it better.) Anyhow, Mike opened up the top of the hive. I salvaged a piece of comb that had fallen off and brushed the bees back in, we rearranged the top bars a bit and put her back together, still not knowing how to solve this one. I had hoped the bees had built on one side of the roof, but no, it was right square centered so pretty full up with hive built in the wrong spot. Whatever.
We went back in our house with our two pieces of comb that fell off, We had brushed all the bees off that comb and put the comb on a plate. A few minutes later we saw a bee crawling on the comb, so we took it out, and brushed him off. Went back in the house and a few minutes later saw another bee on the comb. So we took a closer look and discover a dozen or so bees were being born, and emerging from cells. That was pretty cool to watch. Grabbed my camera. Click on these to get a close look. The one below has a bee going in to clean out the cell. The third photo shows a section that had no larvae.. just honey. Cool. We harvested the honey and had honey from our own bees for breakfast!
Click on the photos to enlarge and see the bees being born.
Oh yeah.. The first bee sting on Mike's finger.
Harvested Honey^
