Having soooo much fun with my bees!! Did my second inspection on June 15, 2011 and went off without a hitch. Ok, to be honest it was a complete and total disaster!!....And yes, I had to call my bee mentor, Mr. Fine yet again...
While inspecting the frames, I was looking for everything each of my books tell me to look for...capped brood, eggs, larvae, and the queen if I am lucky enough! Everything looked great! Thought I saw a few queen cells starting and thought, "Uh-oh, here we go again"! This is what I saw:
This is actually a drone cell. I had thought this colony had lost it's queen and was in the process of creating an emergency queen. Now keep in mind, we had never officially found the queen in this one...So yes, I was in a downright dither (for no reason). Since this one was dead, they carried out the traditional bee funeral.
Sad, isn't it? What makes me even more sad is that when winter hits, the girls throw out the drones (boys) to freeze to death because they are of no use to the hive during the long cold winter. I am thinking of trying to save them when the cold weather hits to thank them for all they did for the hive over the summer...just not sure where I could keep them...
The remainder of the frames looked great! Do you see the larvae in the picture above? So cool!
My fearless photographer (aka Travis), thinks it is funny to take pictures of bees on my butt. After checking the hives, I come into the house and load the pics and it is unbelievable how many "bee on the butt" pictures he has taken. He thinks he is pretty funny...I am not laughing like he is...
And finally...A STING!!! And it was not me!! Little Travis is also fascinated and follows me out to the hives. While we were walking back and almost at the house, one of the ladies decided to go for his hair! He started swatting like crazy (worst thing to ever do!) and she landed right on his eyelid! He smashed her and she bit him. I probably would have done the same thing even though they say to just let them go and they will fly off.
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