Maintenance/upgrade

On Sunday, 21 June 2009 we went into our hives to perform maintenance and upgrade.    

We knew this was necessary for two reasons:  a.  bee behaviour--the bees were flying as if on a 400-series highway, and the guard bees were getting cranky;   b. by the calendar, it was time to remove the frames of drone-comb.  

1.   When we opened the hives, we were very pleased that the hives seem equally-strong now:  both have raised comb in all nine frames of their top (second) brood super, and it's mostly capped.   We didn't go into the bottom brood super of either hive.   

2.  We removed the frame of drone-foundation we'd given each hive for varroa mite control (varroa mites lay in the bees' drone comb, so if you give the bees handy drone-foundation, the bees will raise drone-comb, the varroa will lay there, and this frame can be removed BEFORE the varroa hatch and this thwarts the varroa--and we don't need the drones anyhow).   Lesson learned:   mark the drone-comb frame!   Fortunately we remembered where it was and successfully removed this first try both times.  

Above:   Removing a drone-comb frame.

Below:   The Young Beekeeper's Cousin (a big help to have an extra pair of hands).

Above:   the time of day and the weather were both perfect for this job--early, cool, and a sparkling June day with low humidity, though we had rain yesterday.   We've removed the frame of drone-comb from the near hive (it's leaning against the hive).   We've given the bees a replacement frame with regular worker-foundation, and we put the queen excluder on top.   Next, on top of the queen excluder, we will place a shallow super with ten frames of wired worker-foundation in which to raise comb and make honey for us.   We've already given the far hive its queen-excluder above the second brood-box, and on top of that, a shallow super containing ten frames of wired drone-foundation on which to raise comb, and in which to place honey for us.    (Comb raised on drone foundation is said to be easier to extract because the cells are bigger:   if all goes well, we'll find out if this is true!)

Below:  the Junior Beekeeper's glove was stung--here's a photo of the (pulsing) venom sac.