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Pete and I went for a very short kayak paddle…

N got her contacts and has a job babysitting a few times a week for some school age kids. S is taking her Psych class at U Maine Augusta this week (she calls it summer camp). Krypto seems to be recovering from the ear/eye infections.

Pete cleaned out the frog pond and we have a few frogs that are still deciding if they will come back. Right now we are running a fountain off of electrical, but in the next week or so we’ll turn it into a solar powered pump again.

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Pete will add text, but we checked out the hive and the top box is full of honey. The queen has even laid some eggs up there, so we put the next box on top. This one will be filled with honey for us!

We have at least 8 frogs.

On the left below is a small bullfrog. On the right, a green frog. Two species so far.

You’ll recall from our last post that we talked about the fact that the bees were just starting to draw out comb on the frames in the second super of our hive (i.e. the honey super that is stacked directly on top of the brood box). That was 21 days ago. Today, we opened up the hive to see how far along the bees were with drawing the comb and filling the box with honey. We’ve had a great spring and summer for the hive thus far and the girls have been busy while we were away.

Below is a pic PJ took of one of our bees on the oregano that is presently in bloom in our garden. They also made good use of all the clover flowers that popped up in the “lawn” while we were away.

We were amazed to find that all 10 of the frames were completely drawn out and nearly all the cells were filled with honey. Below is one of the 10 frames in the hive honey super. It is almost completely filled with honey. Cells with the “ripe honey” (i.e. honey with the correct water content) have been capped with wax. Those cells occupy approximately the top 1/3 of the frame. Those cells are fairly obvious given their lighter color. There are also a few darker cells that contain pollen or bee bread.

The next image is a close up of the bottom of the same frame shown above. If you look very carefully, you’ll see that a small region of cells do not contain any honey. They actually contain eggs that the queen has laid. So although this top super is mostly for honey storage, sometimes the queen will work her way up into that second box. This really isn’t a problem, but some people don’t like any brood in their honey supers and so they put a wire grate called a “queen excluder” in between the brood box and the supers. The worker bees can move through this mesh but the queen is sufficiently inhibited that she just hangs out in the bottom box.

The queen excluder is also used for some of the more advanced hive management/swarm prevention that we’ll need to deal with next year. But I’ll wait for later to describe that. If you are really curious and just can’t wait, do a Google search for “Demaree swarm prevention”.

You can also see a cluster of bees hanging from the bottom of the frame. Because we saw eggs on that frame and because the bees remained clustered like that for several minutes, PJ suggested that the queen might be in that miniball of bees. She took several pictures, but we couldn’t identify the queen. Either we couldn’t see her, or the bees were clustered for a different reason.

Next, I’m putting a frame of honey back into the hive honey super. To check the frames in the brood box below the honey super, I needed to pull off the honey super. I remembered from bee class that this box was going to be heavy, but I wasn’t really expecting how heavy it turned out to be. It’s generally reported that a deep super can hold approximately 90 pounds of honey. I’d say it was slightly heavier than that with all the frames, wax, bees and box.

This picture shows some eggs in some of the cells from a frame in the brood box–always a good sign. The top of the cells and the bees are really in the plane of focus here, so the eggs are a little fuzzy. But there is one per cell and they are standing on end in the center, so all seems well. We also saw uncapped larvae of different ages as well as capped brood, but you’ve seen that before…

Here’s another shot of a frame from the brood box. If you look carefully, you can see that the open cells all contain eggs. The queen has been active.

PJ took a picture of me putting the medium super on top of the two boxes that the bees use for their home. The first thing you’ll notice is that the medium super (or Illinois super) is not as deep as the brood box and hive honey super (only 6 5/8″ high versus the 9 5/8″ of the standard frame). That’s because, as I stated above, one of those full sized boxed filled with honey is pretty darned heavy to haul around. An Illinois super filled with honey still weighs about 60 pounds. And I’m not getting any younger…

You can also note that although I’m in a tee shirt, shorts and tevas I’m still a bit of a weeny and use my hat and veil.

Here’s the hive with the new, Illinois super installed. Here’s to hoping the rest of the summer is as good to the bees, because whatever they put in the medium super we get to eat (and share, of course). If the bees work hard and they fill the first Illinois super, we’ll need to add a second. I have it in pieces in the garage at present. I need to get on the ball and build and paint it…just in case.

The honey will be extracted around the week of Labor Day. Getting all the bees out of the super(s) and into the car for a trip to the extractor should be great fun!