After two full weeks in their new home I needed to have a look and see what my bees were doing. They have been so busy collecting pollen and nectar and I’ve wasted hours each week simply sitting by the hive watching them come and go.
There is a window on my hive, but because at the last minute I decided to create entrances at either end of the hive, the window doesn’t quite look into where they are building.
I opened the hive on a hot sunny day and was very excited to see that they had indeed been very, very busy.
Out of the eight top bars I had given them, they had built large combs on five of them and a smaller comb on the sixth. All in two weeks.
The pink foundation sheet was the largest comb and most of the pink had been covered over and inside the little hexagonal chambers were baby bees, little curled round bee larvae and capped combs containing developing bees. Inside the others was multicoloured pollen collected from my garden and beyond to feed the brood and some sealed honey for stores. All good signs that my bees are happy, healthy and productive.
I added three new bars so that they can expand their colony quickly. The first brood will be hatching in a week or so and that’s when things will really start to take off and the home building will increase, but now I can see what they are up to through the window, so I don’t need to interfere with them and can watch safely from outside.
