First Hive Dive - with Jay Workman

After our bees had been in the backyard two weeks, we opened up the hive to see what the girls (and some boys called drones) had been up to. First we had to make a cheesy, look-at-us-in-our-bee-suits video. Even Annie (my cat) showed up to check us out.

We lit the smoker and opened 'er up to see that things were progressing quite well.  Here's footage of the first frame we pulled out. This frame had a good amount of comb drawn out and the ladies have lots of honey and brightly colored pollen stored in the cells. All of the work that goes into building and maintaining the hive and raising the colony is done by the female worker bees. When Jay and I were taking the beekeeping class last fall, the roles within the hive really fascinated me, especially considering they are all controlled by the queen. More on this later...

Ok enough videos. Here are some pictures from the same hive dive.

 Notice Jay's shoes match the veil...

 Jay reading the daily bee (also looking for the queen)

 I posted this one earlier but its still cool to see how bright the comb and pollen are on this newly drawn out frame.

 See how dark the comb is on this frame. This was one of the frames we got from David, who sold us the bees and queen for our hive. As the comb cells get used for storage (of honey, pollen and baby bees) they begin to turn darker brown. Pretty neat!