Now To Look Into The Hive

Setting down the smoker and ready to open the hive to see if the Queen ate her way out of her shipping container. Note bare hands to this point in going into the hive.

After putting on leather gloves Carol removes the inner hive cover to access the starter-feeder.

The starter-feeder, with sugar-water used to feed the colony while it is new and foraging not yet firmly established, is now being removed.

With the starter-feeder tray removed, the foundation-frames - with lots of bees - are visible. The bluish tag is attached to the queen container - which when inserted at hive set-up time caused the wider than normal frame spacing.

The small queen-shipping container, shown upper right with worker bees crawling over it, was empty and the queen is somewhere among the foundation frames - hopefully laying eggs and increasing the colony's supply of worker bees for the summer months ahead.

This Weeks Visitors

In order of most to least visitors

United States
Germany
Canada
Russia
Spain
China
India
Poland
France

Mars

 (no visitors from Mars - but it fits the description)

and add
United Kingdom
Netherlands 

Stargate

An old brown glittering beer bottle bottom in a marsh becomes a Star-gate to a galaxy of the mind - and it was a Star-gate to my mind at first glance at the reflection of the world above

Preparing To Fill Feeder In Hive

Carefully - trying not to squash any of the little guys - lifting off the water-proof hive lid

free and clear

now for a little calming smoke

lifting the feeder cover and gently puffing the bellows to blow smoke onto the bees

Carol had been interested in honey bees for some time and then after Christmas this year started a bee-keeping course - one evening a week - in Harford  county.  Her interest steadily increased so she ordered hive components and her starter colony - mixed Russian and Italian as it turned out - to set up in late April.  Cold days and rainy weather gave us a little concern but with the well built hive frame and sugar-water starter feeding the bees seemed to be surviving nicely. She would refill the top feeder without smoking the bees but today she was going to inspect the special Queen bee shipping cage to insure that the queen had chewed her exit route and was laying eggs to keep the colony vital.
 

one final puff before lifting off the feeder cover

Old Whiskey Bottle

- with an e