[Sovek]

Despite it being summer in the deep south, stuffed in a bee jacket and latex gloves so I didnt get stung too bad, it was a great day to go out to the bee yard. After my inspection on the lang yesterday I have concerns that it may be queenless, so taking the advice of getting some brood from one hive and putting it in the other hive, I set out to do exactly that. I determined the the best way to go about this was to get actual eggs. Queen in the the TBH must have been telepathic, I swear. I wanted to grab some comb they were just starting to build up with eggs, move it to a bar in the lang via hairclip and see what happens. So I get to the piece I was hoping for, and it was covered in bees.... hmm, OH! There she is! Queen Spotted! I grabbed my flashlight, and sure enough, eggs spotted . Took it off the bar and then put it in a new bar that fits the lang (without the queen), close up the TBH, open up the lang. What I saw shocked me. Bees, everywhere. Not only that, I had made some improvements in wanting to get it ready for a transfer to a TBH so I put in some bars in between the frames. I wound up crushing and straining a bunch of honey and nectar yesterday (yesterday....) for the bees to reclaim and put in empty bars. They have already drawn out an insane amount of comb on one bar and pretty much started on the rest. I was lucky to have room for the new bar.

With any luck I wont be seeing any queen cells on that comb saturday but who knows.

just wow.

Edit to add: Forgot to mention, I saw the head of a brand new drone peeking out of its cell, hadnt fully emerged yet

 

[djei5]

I'm not a TBH guy, but I love it when I have good days like that! Best of luck on the queen!

 

[Christi W.]

Even mundane days make me smile so I expect you're over the moon. Good for you!

 

[squarepeg]

nice!

 

[Sovek]

Even mundane days make me smile so I expect you're over the moon. Good for you!

Oh yes, Yes I am, especially after deciding to go back out and start labeling the top bars so I know what is what (Masking tape, TBH beeks friend, repairs comb and great for notes), every single cell has brood, pollen, nectar, eggs or honey, the only exception are the brand new cells not fully drawn yet. The poor queen doesnt have room to lay anywhere....

I also have an ENTIRE bar of nothing but capped brood. No telling when its going to emerge, but when it does... watch out. WAY more cells than a frame of deep brood.

 

[Sovek]

And the news gets even better. Turns out my fears were completely unjustified. I opened up the lang to take another look now that I know what I'm looking for, first attempt had nothing but after pulling a frame out, sure enough, I could see an entire frame of eggs. And the bees were really calm, up until I started blowing on them to move, they didnt like that.

I also noted something interesting, Seems I have two sizes of worker bees, This is probably because some of them were raised in naturally drawn comb while I was prepping for the planned move. All in all, I hope to have Tuesday off, if not, friday, so they get their new TBH next week and I can rid myself of the lang.