Royalty! The Dark Queen Reveals Herself

This hive has been so rewarding.  I love to listen to the peaceful hum, and on good days when the nectar is flowing, you can smell the honey being made.  I've watched rounds of new bees hatch and new brood develop, have monitored the comings & goings, watched the multi-colored pollen come in and be made into bee bread in the brood area, nectar be deposited, and then consumed,  and watched these energetic ladies draw new comb.

Here is a series of pictures of a couple of new bees thinking of emerging.

Up, down!  It's a struggle.

   

 

 

 

I see this happen all the time in the OH, but I still don't take such good pictures of it;
I took these pictures outdoors in another hive.

The brood fills in an oval, then empties from the center out, and repeats.  That tells me they were successful in raising a queen from the young brood I placed in the hive, but weeks go by and I don't see her highness.

I have read that the bees can make wax more efficiently if they are in a dark environment, so I keep a cover over the hive when I am not watching the activities.  Here they have begun drawing comb in the 3rd frame up.

Capped & open brood, nectar and pollen.

Colorful pollen above and below brood.  The bottom frame  is from last year's brood nest.
The wax becomes darker as it is re-used.

Now they have drawn comb on all of the frames in the hive.  

The busy tube to the outdoors.  They navigate about 5' of tube.
I drilled small holes in it every inch or so because they had problems with condensation.
The holes allow the moisture to escape.

The bottom 2 sets of frames (there are 8 frames, 2 at each level) are full of brood.
The top 2 sets are newly drawn and currently are being filled with nectar.

the other side

nectar

Bright orange pollen being stored among the brood.
They ran short on open cells for a bit and have had a very busy wax-making week.

If you are using my plans to build a hive, I left more than bee space at the bottom.   I wondered if that was a mistake. You might want to leave less.  Here you can see the bees have drawn some comb suspended from the bottom bar of the lowest frame.  This is drone comb, as would be expected.  It will be interesting to see if it is used for storage, or always for drones.  It is new yesterday.  I expect it will first be used for drones, as there are very few drone cells elsewhere.

 AND... drumroll, please!  Presenting our Dark Queen!

In the center of this picture you can see the queen with her court.
She was busily evaluating and depositing eggs into the cells the bees had cleaned and prepared.
Under the bottom rung of the frame you can see the thick crowd of festooning bees stimulating their wax glands. 

The dark queen and her court.

I consider this hive a great success so far.  If I did nothing more with them but watch, and possibly add a feeder if & when food sources dry up, they would become crowded and need to swarm.  I can carry the hive outdoors to tend it, but I have not needed to.
I cut a hole in the center top of this hive before putting the bees in, and I hope to make a 'honey super' before they fill the 4 frames they have newly drawn.  The hole on the top is plugged.  I will cut a matching hole in the small super, align the holes, remove the plug and allow the bees to enter the super to deposit honey. The super would be just 2 frames side-by-side, so would be light & easy to remove & take outdoors to harvest the honey and give them new empty frames to work on.

Yes, you really do want to build an observation hive.

In this first picture, you can see a chubby yellow drone, newly hatched, center top.  You can also see the ladies warming the remaining drone cells by pressing their thoraxes against them, bottom right & just left of center bottom.  Most drones from the brood I placed into the OH have hatched now.

The beautiful weather has returned, and all of the blossoms that have been on hold during the chilly weeks are out there awaiting the bees.  The bees have had no problems navigating their tube.  I have it exiting through a hole in a 2x4, which is set in the window, rather than drilling holes through my walls like real die-hard bee-zerkers would do.  :)  It is rewarding to see the heavy loads of pollen and nectar coming in. The comb is glistening with cells full of golden liquid, and others packed with bee bread.

There is an opening into the tube in the middle of that crowd.

Settling In

Two days after installing the bees, you can see the development of very young brood, the pearly white little commas in the cells.  It is probably not coincidence that this is just about an inch above the first queen cup that was getting so much attention.  3 more queen cups were quickly built along the same stretch of comb, and a couple of others in other locations.  They are surprisingly difficult to get decent pictures of.

The weather took a turn toward more normal March conditions, and the bees in the observation hive have not had any reason to try navigating their tube to go foraging.  

The area center top of this frame of dark brood, where the wax has been built onto the window, is one of the queen cups, with its ever present cluster of attendants.  Notice how uniformly capped this frame of brood is.  It is now 3 days later, and that is changing rapidly. 

If you look at the 9 o'clock position in this picture, you can see a new little lady chewing her way our of her cell.  The newbees are very fuzzy, the light yellow of the fuzz on their thorax clearly identifying them.

Today some of the larger larvae are being capped into their cells.  Those would have been eggs laid 4 days before the frames were moved into the observation hive.   And in the lower frame, you can see an increased number of open cells, vacated by the newly hatched bees.  The drone cells remain capped.  If they are the same age as these ladies, they should make their appearance in 3 days.

Stocking my Observation Hive!

The time has come!  Spring has arrived early with heat & sun, the bees in the Langstroth hive in the yard made it through the mild winter in good health & expansive numbers.  Upon inspection they were found to have frame upon frame of brood in 3 levels, and about 20 sealed swarm cells.  Timely inspection!


The weather was a warm 69 degrees and sunny, but windier than ideal, so we worked quickly, trying to shield the brood from exposure.

I selected 2 deep frames of brood, pollen & honey, and because of the abundance, a medium frame which has some brood, including some nice plump drone cells, and another medium frame which is mostly honey, much of it capped.  There are pollen stores in each of the frames.

The observation hive is now full of bees and in the house!  We think that we left the queen in the original hive, although with the wind, we did not take time to be certain.  Each hive has brood in all stages and some queen cups.  The bees made tentative explorations, with some finding the exit and returning after short flights.  A sugar syrup feeder is installed, but not getting much attention.

Observing my Observation Hive

My word of the day is "festooning"!  I had never witnessed the bees dangling from each others legs, forming long chains and lace networks.  Apparently this is associated with wax production.

The bees are busy little things, and set right out to remodel their new surroundings.  They built a series of cells deeper, until they touched the plexiglas of the hive. and then chewed back through their handiwork.  They attached some of the brood cells to the glass as well, including a queen cup that gets constant attention.  Since I very seldom have a chance to see the cup without a bee inside it, I am optimistic that it may be of value to the hive.

I really need to work on the 'how' of getting pictures without a lot of glare.

Some of the pearly white brood can be seen here, for the moment without nurse bees tending.

In the picture below, you can see the usual view of little bee butts sticking out of cells, as they are busy about tending the depths.