Royalty

Its still too cold to start gardening, back and forth between snow, rain, and 60-70's. I've been following and identifying the local bloom watching what pollens the bees are bringing home to eat.
Its been warm enough to open the hives and check how things are progressing. I did this on March 16th. One hive is really strong, the other not so strong.This was apparent just watching the traffic at the front of the hives. My guess is that there was a 20:1 difference in traffic strong hive to weak hive. Upon opening the weaker hive it had a small population with the majority of the bees only 2 combs vs 8 combs in the more populous hive. I added a pollen patty to each hive at this time. Pollen is used by the nurse bees to make bee bread which they eat and feed to the larvae. Pollen patties are manufactured pollen substitutes. these help the bees build up their populations sooner especially when it is too cold to gather natural pollen.
I was shocked to see the difference in the two hives and with it getting dark I was worried that keeping the hives open for too long for fear of chilling the bees. The next warm day was Wednesday, March 19 so I took a long lunch from work and came home for a quick hive manipulation. I removed two combs from the populous top bar hive that had lots of emerging bees on each comb and transferred those into the weaker hive to boost their numbers. It when really well and things are picking up in the weaker hive. I did also see both queens. Here is a shot of one of them:

She's center right. Here is a close-up:

Most of the bees around her are really young. You can tell because their faces look fuzzier than the older bees. I think the older ones are the one that appears to be climbing over the queen and the one pointed up real close to the queen's tail.
Most of the others look like they have smaller eyes and more face fuzz.
The brownish comb that the queen is standing on is capped workers they are anywhere from 8 to 21 days after being laid as eggs. You can see in the above picture there aren't a lot of capped workers as evidence by all the open (uncapped) cells. The hive needs to keep plenty of bees to warm these capped bee (larvae), so with low numbers of emerged bees the queen will limit how many eggs she lays when the temperatures are still cold. This because when it gets cold the bees huddle together to stay warm. The colder it gets the tighter they huddle. If their cluster gets too small to cover some capped larvae, those larvae freeze. The other interesting fact is that this comb has no stored honey or pollen. There is plenty of honey in this hive towards the back, probably 50 lbs. When its cold the honey will freeze and the bees need to warm it up to move it from where it is frozen. This takes a lot of energy. The bees have been busy collecting water to help them liquefy their stored honey and make bee bread (pollen).
Here is a saucer that I fill with water for the bees to access. I'd rather they drink in my yard than on of my neighbors.

Both hives have plenty of honey. I expect the dandelions to be in full bloom within a month. The dandelions flowers are a great dependable source of nectar and pollen, that is followed by fruit trees weather permitting. Last year a late April deep freeze (17 degrees) killed all the fruit tree blossoms before they could open. So I made a judgement call that I could take some honey from the weaker hive (they still have plenty after my plunder). Here is what I helped myself to:

It was about a gallon after straining.
So here are some pictures of blooms from our neighborhood:

Lupine

Not sure what these are but this house has a nice fence row of them. It was too cold for the bees this day so I didn't see any of them out this morning (April 5th).
Here is a bar from the more populous hive. These raised cells, often called bullet shaped,  indicate that there are drone larvae (males) capped inside.

The drone's cells, approx 30 on the left, are larger diameter as well as dome capped. The orange colored cells in the center of this comb are filled, partially, with pollen. Both of these items, pollen and drones indicate that this hive is confident that they can make it through the spring till the next bloom. The drones don't do any work in the hive and if the hive, with a good laying queen, was struggling they wouldn't be raising drones. The weak hive had no drones being raised. That means that this stronger hive has a high probability of passing its genetic code, via the drones, to unmated queens in the neighborhood. There are many more drone cells in this hive, I would guess 200. I used this picture because the other pictures I took with drone cell had lots of bees covering the cells.
Here is a picture of the queen from the strong hive, center right:

The bees with their heads in the cells are feeding larvae. The older/larger larvae can be seen in the upper left of the image, they are curled. They will soon be capped by the workers, at which time those capped larvae will spin cocoons and pupate.
Here is a close up of the larvae:

And here are the eggs, they are at the edge of my vision and look like tiny grains of rice:

 Thats all for now. I'll find out what those flowers are and be back with more very soon!

Bee Hive First Month

I picked up bees a little over a month ago. I purchased the bees from a contact at the Boulder County Beekeepers' Association, actually Miles the president. He's a warm hearted fella who picks up a trailer full of packages in California and brings them back to Boulder County. I purchased 2 packages 3 pounds each.
Each package contains about 10,000-12,000 worker bees, a queen, and a can of sugar water to keep them feed during transit.

Three pound bee packages April 26th

As a new beekeeper it was a little unnerving driving with 20,000 bees in the seat next to me.
I pulled the can of sugar water out and dumped the bees into the hives one at a time. The queens arrive in a small cage suspended in each of the packages. In the photo above you can see the small metal tab, to the right of the cans, which suspends her cage near the top of the package. I left the queen in the her cage, but moved that cage into the hive before dumping in the bees. With the queen still caged the bees are more likely to stay in the hive rather than fly off somewhere. These bees in these packages aren't "daughters" of the queen but just bees that the company who packages bees dumped in with a newly mated queen. This means that the bees aren't necessarily acquainted with the queen and may kill her as she smells different than their mother. A few days alone in the hive with the new queen takes care of this and gets them used to her smell. After a few days pass the queen is released into the hive, the queen cage removed. The queen cage has a small corked hole, but by removing the cork and squishing a marshmallow in hole the bees can chew through and release the queen in a few days. I chose this method rather than removing the cork manually after a few days, but I still needed to remove the empty queen cage from the hive.
The problem that I had was that even though the temperature was in the low 80's F when I got the bees. Several days later it snowed several inches and I didn't want to open the hives in the cold.

Queen cage with fresh comb and pollen

When I did open the hives a week after dumping them in, both colonies of bees had built significant comb. The comb was attached to the queen cage and in attempting to remove the queen cage I damaged the comb. In the first hive, I didn't realize what was happening until it was too late and one of the combs dropped to the bottom of the hive. This caused a stir to say the least.
I closed the hive to regroup. I quickly developed a plan and built a "broken comb holder". After about an hour I opened the hive and picked out the broken pieces of comb and put it in the "holder". I was worried about this for a couple of reasons. First, I wasn't sure if maybe some bees got trapped under the comb when it fell in the hive. Oh no maybe the queen! And secondly, the bees were just starting out and I wasn't sure if they would be put back by stealing their comb and food when they had so very little.

Comb holder

 Above is a picture with two of the bigger pieces of comb. The wax is soft when it is new and broke fairly easily. The dandelions are in full bloom. That's what the orange pollen is in the wax comb. I also think that is why the wax is yellow colored. The majority of the pollen is from dandelions, but there are some other flowers with different colored pollen, red, black, yellow, light green.

Its surprising how much wax 3 pounds of bees can produce in a little time. 

It is important to check the hive shortly after hiving the package. The main goal is to make sure the queen is okay and is laying, otherwise the colony is doomed (unless another queen can be gotten). As a new beekeeper it is hard to find the queen, however it isn't necessary to actually see her, the beekeeper must simply see evidence of her presents. 

Here is one of the top bars 14 days after the bees were "hived". All of this wax was made by the bees since their hiving.

There are plenty of capped cells, but as a new beekeeper I wasn't sure if this is capped honey or capped brood (baby bees). But upon closer inspection I found uncapped larvae.

After I saw the little curled worms I had a better idea of what was happening. The queen starts laying eggs closer to the top and center because the wax comb starts there, the bees start building from the top down. as they build cells they build them from the top center both downward and outward. The queen fills the cells in the same order. So the capped cells in the center are older larvae that have been capped. 

On each of the top bars that the workers had drawn comb on, 6 so far (in two weeks). There is about an inch of nectar near the wood top bar, then just below that the next inch of darker colored comb is pollen. then the rest is capped and uncapped brood.

Eggs hatch and turn into larvae. They are feed and in 8 days the workers cap the cells. The larvae continues to develop into the pupa stage, then they emerge from their cells as bees after 21 days from the egg hatching.

After closer inspection I did find eggs too. They are very small and hard to see in new comb. I've drawn black lines around two cells where the eggs are "easier" to see.

Bee eggs in cells

 The queen should be filling all cells leaving very few (or no) empty cells.

My good deed caused me some grief. The comb I rescued and put back into the hive got attention from the bees as you can see below. They started building it out in every direction attaching it at all skewed angles. I ended up taking this rescue comb holder out because the bees started attaching the comb and rubber bands to the adjacent comb which nearly caused more broken comb.

 The next thing I saw that I wasn't expecting was drone cells. Most of the hive is comprised of worker bees. Typically 10's thousands, 50-80,000 at peak season is what I read. At that time there is usually a couple hundred male bees (drones). They are a bit larger than worker bees. They are raised in larger cells called drone cells. These cells in addition to being larger are also capped with domed lids.

Its hard to tell without a reference of worker cells, but this whole comb is built with the larger sized worker cells. I'm holding it upside down in this picture. Like the other bars the bees put nectar at the top (near the wood) then some pollen, then the eggs / brood. The capped (closed) cells near the wood is honey. Honey is nectar whose moisture level has been evaporated to about 18%. The bees cap it for storage. The dark cells are a combination of pollen and nectar. I didn't realize all the colors that pollen came in.

A view from inside

More to follow...