Ladies are busy

[bk]

Bees were very active today.  Flowers were just buzzing.

Opened hive and bees were flowing like water.

A little smoke and they headed inside.

Found a queen cup - empty so no concern, yet!

Lots of bridging comb and some destruction during inspection - just drone cells so I'm only feeling a little bad.  Good news is no mites on the drone larvae.

[histopicker]

That is looking really good!

[Brad H.]

Looking good!

[Deleted]

How the hell I miss this thread? Over the swamp gathering maybe? Cool pics, and thanks for the update.

[bk]

Planted a whole lot of peony plants that came from my Mothers garden.  Well this year I heard the hum of bees and found hundreds crawling down through the flowers blossoms, going inside the flowers and disappearing from sight, but still talking.  Neat to watch them work.  Resurfacing from deep inside the flowers, their little pollen sacs were full.

[bk]

Good bee weekend. 

My beek mentor helped me with an inspection and we found the queen that I thought was gone (marked her this time).  There was great rejoicing.  I had jumped to conclusions when I couldn't see eggs or any 1st or 2nd instar larvae and the hive was really noisy.  Guess I won't try and inspect just before dark next time - even if the weather won't cooperate.

 

No evidence of varroa, for which I'm thankful.  My hives are still acting as twins.  Each one has one deep is full of eggs, larvae, and capped brood.  The flow is on.  Have two deeps of nectar and pollen and capped honey. Added supers this weekend.  Sure won't hesitate to get three pound packages of Italian Minnesota Hygienics next time I need bees. 

Checked my split with the grafted queen and all is well.  She was out of her cell and zooming around.  Now to keep out of the nuc until she has a chance to mate and start her queenly duties.  Oh for patience...

[Brad H.]

Looking good bk. Will be exciting to hear if that queen works out for you. That queen was purposely reared by you? What's the process to do that?

[bk]

Thanks for the question, Brad H. 

The queen was grafted from our overwintered hardy WI stock.  First time since attending queen school at the U of Mn that we ( my step-son and I) attempted to raise our own queens.  The principal in a short form is to take very young larvae and transfer them to a man made queen cup.  They are then returned to a brood hive and 24 hours later you can see if you had a good graft.  If you did the bees will build out the queen cups into a queen cell.  We let them mature in the brood hive and then transfer them to a split prior to their emerging from the queen cell.  We managed to make eight splits already from our hives.  Hoping to increase the number of our hives with winter hardy, "hygienic type" hives.

Had about 66% success rate with our grafting.  And on our own eight splits we had 100% hatch rate.  Still waiting to hear if the queen cups we gave away hatched.  Now to see how the mating flights go and how the little ladies perform.  I'm not being very patient... sort of like waiting for Christmas as a little boy - hurry up my little queen.

Can post some grafting pics if interested.

[nytrapper23]

Went down to my daughters to release some pheasants, walking around checking her fruit trees and blueberry bushes, I noticed all these yellow flowers blossoming . When I walked up to them it was amazing all I could hear was bees. So I snapped a few pics of the busy little guys.

You can really see I think it's pollen on there rear legs.

[bk]

Looks like they are getting some serious pollan. Thanks for sharing some great pictures, nytrapper23.