Tour of the Front Porch

Around 6 pm last night, Karl attached a Flip video camera to a fishing pole to shoot this video of our bees hanging out on the second story front porch. Thankfully, the bees don't hang out like that all day. I know it's harmless, but I just don't like to walk under a pile of bees.

Earlier in the day, Karl built a screen top to replace the original wooden one. The screen will allow fresh air to get into the hive more easily and hopefully will keep it a bit cooler. We aren't buying the bee air conditioning unit yet. He also built a feeder into the new lid. A quart mason jar with pinholes punched into it will sit upside down into the hive. Bees then can lick the lid to drink the mixture of 1:1 sugar water. Hopefully feeding the bees this way will help them keep the hive cool while encouraging them to build comb.





When Karl took the hive apart to check thing out, the super on top of the queen excluder is a large one and was full of bees and honey. Karl estimates the whole super weighed over 120 lbs. Here it is on floor.
















Bees had built comb on top of the queen excluder so he scraped that off and put it aside. The kids were able to taste honey that was left on that comb. They loved it!








Finally, we didn't see the queen, but we did see a lot of larvae in the second super just under the queen excluder. There is plenty of room for a lot more bees in that super.