The Honey Super

The bees have done amazing things in the past week.   The hive is full.  It was high time to give them more space.  So the Honey Super has finally made an appearance.
I built the super to hold 2 medium frames.  It sits over a 1.5" hole I made in the center top of the observation hive.  That hole has been plugged until today.

The wood I cut to build the honey super, all cut from "1 inch thick" wood, which is 3/4":
2- 21" x 4.75" one for base, one for the inner cover.
                      The base has a 1.25" hole drilled in the very center, to align
                      with the 1.25" hole in the top of the observation hive.
2- 6.75"x4.75" sides
2- 6"x3" inner sides, for frames to rest on  
               Drill 2 holes in each pair of these (side and inner side),
               and place screen between for ventilation, as for the hive.
4- 19.5" x 1" for the top and bottom bars of the frame to hold the plexiglas in place.
4- 4.75" x 1" for the sides bars of the frame to hold the plexiglas in place
22.5" x 6.5" for top of telescoping outer cover
2- 22.5" x 1.5" side for telescoping outer cover
2- 4.75" x 1.5" ends for telescoping outer cover

Also needed are 2 pieces of plexiglas, 19.25" x 6.5"

Depending on your surroundings, you may want hardware clasps to secure the honey super to the hive.  I secured it by running tape around the junction.  I also did not install a lock on the telescoping cover.

The plexiglas is sandwiched between the 3" wide hive frame supports and the 1" bars that frame the plexiglas.  The wood is glued and nailed.  The plexiglas is not meant to open.  

This little super will be removed by (removing the tape I have around the junction and) sliding 2 flexible plastic cutting boards (or pieces cut from milk jugs) between the hive and the super, and lifting one of the pieces of plastic with the super, while leaving the other with a weight on it to plug the opening.  The super will be taken outside, the cover and inner cover removed, the filled frames removed and new frames installed.  The bees will be shushed by smoker in the direction of the hive opening on the outside of the house. As worker bees, they should have no problem finding their way home.  This part is all theory so far.  

The super is installed and the bees are beginning to investigate.

The Queen Mother

It is quite fun to have people interested in my bees, and honey bees in general.  My dark queen inspired questions about her color.  Her mother was a fair Italian queen.  Here are pictures I took yesterday in the hive that the observation hive came from.  This golden queen is bright and easy to spot as she moves along the frame.

Honey bees have been cultivated for thousands of years.  European bees were dark, then a strain developed in Italy that was golden.  People liked the bright golden queen because she was easy to spot.  They also tended to produce lots of honey.  So some people started using Italian queens, and when combined with European drones, the resultant bees were striped.  I'll bet you've see striped honey bees haven't you?  

  The drones are the males, and can be either yellow or dark.  They are distinctively larger, and their head looks very black because their larger eyes meet at the top of the head.  They also have a squared off butt.  Call them wide load, fat boy, or "pet me bees", they have no stinger, so you can pick them up & play with them.

 

Bees have been bred to select for mild temperament, productivity, hygienic behavior (if they find diseased larvae & dispose of them, the hive avoids the illness or pest), over-wintering, swarming behavior (or lack of it) and more.  There are several popular strains.  Italian bees were the predominant ones brought to this country with the europeans and spread across the country both with the settlers and on their own.  

I was told that whatever queen I get, my bees will most likely be Italian, because that's the largest population of drones, and the queen doesn't breed at home, but flies off to a drone congregation area somewhere high up in the air that really only the bees know about.  She generally only makes one flight, but gets genetic contributions from several drones.  My yellow Italian queen obviously got assorted contributions, in order to have produced a dark daughter, the one in my observation hive.  

Since many people in the area have bees, and buy special queens for one reason or several reasons, I can only speculate about my bee heritage.  Even bee breeders are faced with the difficulty, except those in very isolated places like islands (Buckfast Abbey, on a British island developed a special strain of Buckfast bees).  Very recently there have been some breeders who have more controlled breeding, but usually the approach is to make sure there are a LOT of the right kind of drones around when your queen makes her flight, so a breeder makes certain he has loads of the right drones (and all of his neighbors benefit, assuming they agree on what is "right".)