It wasn't massively warm - around 18C, so I tried to be reasonably quick, but being the first inspection, I was very nervous! - I filled the feeder as soon as we got home today, and wasn't going to open the hive unless it got a bit warmer, but the sun came out for a time so thought I'd have a check. The bees were flying and bringing in some pollen, but not nearly as busy as when it was hot during last week. They'd emptied the 4 pint feeder since Thursday last week (now Monday).
So... I lit the smoker and got the spare super with foundation ready in case I felt they needed more space. Three of us got into suits & I had the hive tool - all ready to go. A little smoke in the entrance, and under the floor, and then wait a couple of minutes.
Removed the roof - the feeder was stuck to the crown board, with 'propolis' - a sort of plant resin glue the bees use to fill small gaps around the hive and stick things together. - Feeder removed, crown board removed. Bees given a touch more smoke though actually they didn't seem that concerned.
Here is the brood box - from the top of the picture to the bottom, we have a 'dummy board' (just a blank board to make a little room in the hive when you need to manipulate the frames.) The first two frames going down the shot were 'new' foundation. The 6 frames with yellow spacers were those from the nuc, and the remaining three frames at the bottom are new.
I removed the dummy board first - this allows me to pull the next frame towards the empty space, and then out of the hive - this means that the bees don't get squashed or rolled. I think this first frame is interesting because it shows how the bees draw out the wax foundation into honeycomb. Here you can see how they've done that. It's a good sign that they've done it on this frame which is right at the edge of the hive - I think it shows they've done reasonably well in the last week. The other side of the sheet is blank as yet.
The next combs were those from the original nuc, and though I couldn't spot eggs in the cells (they are difficult to see without the right light, and especially so in a bee veil), I could see grubs in cells which showed the queen must have laid eggs a few days ago. - One of the things I'd worried about when I put the frames in from the nuc is that I didn't see the queen, but for there to be grubs there now, she must be around and laying. I was lucky enough to see the queen roughly in the middle of the frames. - Can you spot her below?
There weren't too many bees around her at this point. - She is marked (with a red spot) which makes her much easier to spot. You can see below that she is distinctly longer than the normal workers, but in my view easily mistaken for a drone if she were in a clump of bees, and not marked.
We've seen the queen, we've seen she is laying recently, and we've seen that most of the foundation has been drawn out. - There's not much else I wanted to see at the moment, and given that they have filled around 80% of the space available to them, I will give them another super with foundation into which to extend the brood nest and stores and continue to feed them the 1:1 sugar syrup.
The only thing I noted of concern today was that there were quite a few 'play cups' - queen cups - none of which seemed to be filled with royal jelly, and none sealed, but it's something to look for when I next examine the hive. Queen cups are built perpendicular to the normal cells, and are where a new queen might be raised if the hive wants to do so. - It can be the case that they make a new queen in order to swarm, though I think it's getting quite late in the year for them to want to do that. Here you can see a queen cup which I've just broken with the hive tool.
Next inspection pencilled in for 20th August. - Prior to that I might put in the 'varroa' monitoring floor and think about treatment at that point.
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