Last Effort of the Day

Ben and I were back home before our last kid was up in the morning to get ready for school! However we were not done for the morning... to help our bees, we decided to scrape the three frames that we had brought home. As you can see on the picture, there is a lot of larvae (white) all males, and some nectar (shiny), wax and a small amount of pollen (yellow and brownish). We chose to add this step because it would have been a lot of "unnecessary" work for the honey bees; we figured that they have other things to do. Let me tell you that it was a juicy, gooey job! We both took turns.

After that distasteful job, we were left with a puddle of wax, larvae and nectar... alas the frames were clean and reusable. We were done for the morning and I needed a large coffee!

Later in the afternoon, we returned to Shakopee to transfer the 5-frame nuc into the green beehive. As we opened the nuc, we realized that these frames were absolutely loaded with honey bees, brood, nectar and pollen. They were very heavy, and thick.

As the picture shows, the frames were "glued" together. Honey bees have a tendency to do that because they are perfect mathematician-architects: in their hive, they will be relentless at sealing things together if the space between the two is bigger than 3/8" or 1cm. It is called the bee space, which enable the bees to move freely around the hive...no more, no less...just perfect.

Then, Ben placed the 5 nuc-frames into the wooden hive body, then we added the three freshly "cleaned" frames, plus 2 new ones: a total of 10 frames; we shook the rest of the stubborn honey bees from the nuc box over the open beehive: our colony was now set.

We put the first hive body back on the bottom board, deposited a pollen patty on the top bars, replaced the inner cover,and gave them 2-1 gallons of sugar syrup. We added a second hive body to protect the buckets, put on the telescopic cover and 2 bricks to secure the colony. We watched for a little while, and everything seemed to be fine. The buzzing was calm but energetic. I gave them few words of encouragement, and we left. Despite being hot, and sticky under our bee suits, we just beamed. We had done our best. Now the honey bees have to take over, there is nothing else we can do for them, and I think they know that.