May 2008

Well, May came and I was feeding every couple of days, or so it seemed. In total I made 9 inspections and fed the girls about 13.5 litres of syrup!

The frames became more and more built out and more and more brood was being developed. I spotted eggs on 26 April and worked out that new bees were likely due on, or around 17 May. As it was I was slightly wrong; when I went to inspect the hive on 14 May many of the capped cells had already hatched! This means that eggs must have been laid around 23 April - only 5 days after installing the package of bees! Amazing. There's no peace for the wicked however as I saw eggs laid in these newly hatched cells only 2 days later.

Things were going so well in fact that I added the second hive box on 14 May - just 4 weeks after installing the bees. I still cannot quite get to grips with how rapidly they became established. You can see the lovely new brood and a bee hatching on one of the adjacent photographs.

There was some interesting behavior too. The bees started to gather at the front of the hive, pointing towards the entrance fanning their wings. Having spoken to some in the know they think this was an effort not to keep the bee hive cool, but more likely to try to reduce the moisture content of the stored honey in the hive by drawing out air in the hive.

Along with all the good news there was some bad. I spotted two hive beetles on 11 May. These were positively identified at the beekeeping meeting. I was told not to worry as the beetles would only become more dominant if the health of the hive suffered. My hive has been in rude health and I have no beetles since!