First Inspection of the New Hive

As promised in my last post, I inspected the new hive today. Though this hive is offically Hive#2, I have decided to dub them the Arlington girls. After all, this is where they came from, right? Sounds better than "Hive#2" anyway. So henceforth, we will be refering to the Arlington girls and the Georgia girls. The Texas girls, having been absorbed into Hive#1, are for all intents and purposes no more. Hopefully, they taught some Texas Two Step moves to the Georgians before they had their Lone Star traits pheromoned out of them!

Anyway, like I said, today was the day for checking in on the Arlington clan. It has been a little over a week since they were installed with their four, fully invested frames and six frames of foundation.

The first thing evident was that they had drawn out all but one frame and had started on the tenth. Wow! These are some wax producing ladies. As a result of this, I added a second hive box so they could have plenty of room for expansion. If the progress in these two hives continues at this pace, I don't see how I can miss pulling some honey out of them before the year is out. What's more, the Arlington bees did it without the benefit of a feeder on their hive.

The second thing to cheer me was seeing the unmarked queen scrambling along the comb. Not being painted, it is quite a trick finding her among the throngs, but I not only saw her, my lovely wife caught her with the digital camera she got for her birthday! (It really was for her)

You can see her highness in the middle right of the photo. She's the one without the tiger stripes. (Click on the picture for a close up) There was also plenty of capped brood and honey.

I should tell you here about my smoker. Why? Because I had a breakthrough of sorts today with that little contraption. Even for folks who don't know much about beekeeping, the smoker is an easily recognized part of the business. For the beekeeper it is essential. Prior to opening up a hive, a beekeeper will puff smoke from his smoker into the entrance and under the inner cover to throw the bees off their game enough so that he can do his thing without arousing too much unwanted attention. The theory behind it, so the experts tell us, is that the smoke alerts the bees to the possibility of a forest fire (they live in trees when wild) and they race off into the bowels of the hive to retrieve their most prized possession, honey. This may be true, but I also think that they just plain don't like someone blowing smoke in their faces and so they run off to find some fresh air. Either way, they make themselves scarce pretty quickly and having them so preoccupied holds several obvious advantages for our intrepid keeper.

With regard to my smoker, I have always had trouble coming up with the right formula for keeping it lit and billowy with smoke. I tried the prepackaged raw cotton stuff the supply houses sell, I tried sticks and leaves and pine needles. All with limited success. Today, I kept it simple. I broke up some pine board scraps and lit 'em up with my propane torch until I could roast marshmallows on them if I wanted to. Once they were going good, I clipped some small, leaf-covered branches from a thorn bush I don't like much anyway and jammed them into my little inferno. Instant smoke! Enough that I could send smoke signals to my mentor across town. Best of all, it remained smoky throughout my inspection and for awhile after. Like I said, a breakthrough. I just hope that thorn bush isn't some rare toxic thorn bush!

So, in closing, the Arlington girls are settled in and doing fine. Theresa, the lovely wife mentioned earlier, got to experiment with her new camera. And I received no bee stings, not a one. Of course, as history has shown us, bees are a cunning sort and wait for a moment when I have my guard down to exact their revenge for my intrusions. I am in greatest danger when dozing in my lawn chair.

Sting count...steady at 6.