Glory Downs Farm

Glory Downs Farm

Sunday, May 15, 2011

A young man showed up to work for the old beekeeper. First day on the job. The beekeeper says, "Paint all those bee hives." The young man looks at all that work and says, "You don't seem to realize - I have a College Education." The old beekeeper thinks for a minute and says, "I'm sorry. I'll show you how to hold the paint brush."

So today was nice enough to overhaul the bee's episode of artistic creation.  I could go into immense detail on what and why and how they did this but I'll keep it simple and let the videos and pics do most of the 'splainin.

The comb was built for both good and bad purposes.  The good news is that the bee's are feeling like progress is being made and they are ready for more space.  What the little buggers didn't know is that they had some empty frames that were not full of drawn honey comb so I rearranged the furniture a little to manipulate them into working those blank frames. (Pictures to follow)

The bad news is- is that most of that beautiful, white comb they built was drone comb, meaning mostly male bee comb.  There were eggs, and larvae and alot of them.  Males are good for one thing in the bee world and that is mating, and eating. Having all those drones eventually hatching will require the hive to work their tales off keeping up with them. So......I had to take the comb out......  Drone babies are now sitting politely on my windowsill.

Here's the pics and video. Please feel free to ask anything.


Here are several shots of the drone comb before removal.  Covered in busy female worker bee's.  You will see in the video how "upset," they get with me.




The comb was built straight up- but because of the heaviness it started to droop giving it that "wave," affect.




Gloves on for this one!  Empty frames pulled from the hive are laying on the ground.  There are four frames left out of ten yet to be filled.  When two more of these frames are filled- then time for the next super to be added. Super is a bee box. There are ten frames per super.

2 comments:

  1. Where are you learning how to do all this??

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  2. Alot of reading really. When you love something you don't mind reading about it. We also took a beekeeping class and in doing so joined a club. Anytime you have questions you can contact anyone in the club and get some help:) Its interesting all you can learn from your own bee's behavior....each hive has a different "tude."

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