A Humble Hum

“That buzzing noise means something. Now, the only reason for making a buzzing noise that I know of is because you are… a bee! And the only reason for being a bee is to make honey. And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it.” – Winnie the Pooh

While we were assembling honey supers the other day our mailman (who we think reads our magazines before he delivers them) brought a MOST delicious package. Honey from the bees of a friend has a wonderful aftertaste. In the case of this particular friend, I haven’t visited her home, town, or even her state. But now, I’ve tasted it.

Also Beth, summer on ice cream is perfection.

Y’all really must read her blog, it’s one of only a few that I actually read.

I might be your typical overeager newbee but considering how busy the bees seem on all these warm days, I don’t want to miss the opportunity for them to get a head start building comb on the 9 empty frames of wax foundation that they’ll need to fill up with HONEY once the tulip poplar flow begins. We had a special delivery at the house and I spent the weekend sending good honey flow vibes into the equipment I was putting together and painting. Since my grandpa & grandpa – the same grandpa who sketched his hive in 1975 which now graces the bottom left corner of your browser – sponsored the purchase of these two supers for Christmas (making a total of three for my apiary thus far), I painted one of them blue in their honor since it’s Grandma’s favorite color. And the other one I painted the same color as our front door – SW “Gingery.” It’s not that I’m trying to be all matchy Martha but all my boxes are all painted with leftover paint from the house :) except the one from NCSU.

So yesterday I stuck that new super on there. It should take them 3 or so weeks to build all the comb. I put some 1:1 sugar syrup to stimulate wax production. Godspeed, my little charges!

Special thanks to my beekeeper/photographer assistant.

Overall thoughts: Lately the hive has shown a lot of foraging activity which I can see from the deck. Like almost as much as in the spring during the nectar flow. This led me to try and super up one last time as [probably a feeble] attempt at harvesting some honey this year… so when we were done, I stuck the super box back on instead of adding more sugar syrup. I hope this isn’t a mistake and they don’t just keep chewing on my wax foundations.

The box that had been on top (the teal one) was looking really good. Good honey and pollen storage, brood in all stages, all frames in good use and covered in bees. Didn’t see the queen but there were plenty of eggs. After looking at that box I got kind of excited because I thought it would mean the same or better for the bottom box since queens usually prefer to lay down there. But by frame 4 I was really starting to be concerned. The first frame on the side facing me had maybe 15 cells of brown ugly pollen and was otherwise completely empty. Even more frames had up to 50% empty cells, not being used for anything, and fewer bees than I would have expected. Maybe this had to do partly with the fact that I inspected the top box, then took the hive all apart and reassembled it with the white box on top, and the bees had moved down by the time I inspected it (now on top)? And not to mention all the foragers that weren’t home at the time of inspection? But I can’t explain why there would be so little brood in the bottom box besides a bit of capped pupae.