2015-01-18 First steps in making 2015 mead. Maples are blooming & I did my first inspection today. Still have about 30 lbs of stores. Already some drone brood (bad) but good build-up and the queens are laying wall-to-wall. I pushed the bees off with a little smoke so that you can see that theyve hit the end of the first brood cycle: young bees in the uncapped cells in the center have already emerged and the queen has/will lay in these cells again; the capped cells have young bees in them and they will soon emerge, and so it goes. A few small hive beetles, a couple of undetected wax-moth larvae that I dispatched, all the wings look good. No signs of any problems, except one of the queens is off a little in laying (I like to see the eggs in the center, standing erect). Sorry about the poor quality of the video (didnt notice until I was back inside), but getting the census up is about like getting a good bloom set, and I wanted to share it. The challenge now is to avoid swarming. Looks like this hive is going to be hot--got a sting when I shouldnt have.
Posted on: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 20:18:58 +0000
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