May 16, 2009 - 2 pm

It was 95º, very little breeze, partly cloudy at the Bee Yard.

Alpha Hive
There were a hundred, maybe more bees hanging out at the front of the hive. There were a lot of bees flying around the front of the hive as well as bringing in food.

Opened up the honey super and discovered that the girls finally moved in!!!

Five of the honey super frames in the middle have comb being drawn and already have curing nectar in the cells. The bees have just started drawing comb on two more frames but have not stored any honey.

All of this activity has been going on since removal of the queen excluder on May 9th. I am hoping that the girls don't swarm, because right now they are doing a great job of storing surplus honey.

I put the honey super back together and did not get any deeper into the hive.

Beta Hive
Some activity at the hive entrance. Not much activity around front of hive.

Opened up the honey super. Still nothing going on in there. Removed it to look in the top brood super. I went through each frame. There are still four frames full of honey, of those three are capped. The remaining frames have about 85% honey/pollen, with the remaining space filled with capped brood. It seems that the bees are storing honey in the top brood super instead of the honey super. I removed the top brood super to begin looking through the bottom brood super. There were a lot of bees in the bottom brood super, they started to "boil out" so I changed my mind about going through the frames. I put everything back in place. I think I will remove the queen excluder and see what they do.

A few weeks ago I put together a solar powered hive ventilator. Today I installed it on the Beta Hive.