It was finally a nice warm sunny day, one of the first since we installed our bee packages two weeks ago, so we were able to open up the hives and do a proper inspection. (Last Saturday it was too chilly, so all we did was just open up the hives to get the queen box out (and make sure she had escaped the box) and refill their sugar syrup.) I got bee-suited up with all my tools (hive tool, bee brush, and smoker), and started with the yellow hive. I took off the top and started inspecting frame by frame. They had eaten all their sugar syrup and some of their pollen patties, and it looked like they eaten a lot of the old frame honey I had given them and they were started to refill and recap it. Freshly capped honey has this gorgeous white sheen to it, and there was at least one frame completely capped. On one frame, there were also some brood cells where the queen lays eggs, a few cells with bigger caps that will be drones (males) and a few cells with smaller caps that will be workers (females). That means the queen is alive and well. I continued inspecting the frames, looking for the queen, until I finally found her! It was super exciting and absolutely delightful. She is much bigger than her female workers, with a long slender body with a distinct pointed end (unlike the drones that are her size but fat with rounded butts). There was no sign of infection or pests, and I saw everything I needed to see: capped honey, brood cells, queen, even a bunch of bees returning carrying pollen. One healthy hive, check. I closed up and moved on to the blue hive, where I saw all of the same things, though seemingly fewer brood cells. And on the very last frame I checked, we found the queen! It is delightful to have two healthy thriving hives, with two accepted and living queens, and I hope for their continued success. It's a good sign that things have started off so well.
A few delightful bee facts:
Queens: The queen's main responsibility is to lay eggs, as many as 200,000 eggs a year! She also produces pheromones that control and organize many of the behaviors of her colony. We received queens who have already been mated. (After a Queen mates with drones, she stores the drones’ sperm in an organ called the spermatheca. The queen will then use this stored genetic material to fertilize her eggs for the rest of her life. No need to mate again.) Unfertilized eggs develop into males that become drones, while fertilized eggs develop into the female workers.
Workers: They are all female and they do all the work: collecting pollen and nectar, cleaning, filling, and capping cells, feeding the queen and developing brood, drawing out new comb, and managing food stores, and guarding the hive.
Drones: They are the only males found in the hive, they only do one task: mate with virgins queens (not our queen, but other queens out in the world.) We do not necessarily want drones in our hives because they don't do any work and eat up honey that could be used to feed the female workers, but drones are necessary for the continuation of the bees species at large.
With delight,
♥Jamie
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