fall bees

I've been concerned about my bees for a while now. They were pretty angry for a few weeks in late summer, and then they was no new brood, and there has not been a single capped honey cell since early summer.

I suspect that they swarmed at some point and I missed it. There are not nearly as many bees in there as there could be, considering how much brood there was earlier this summer. Then, for a few weeks, I saw no new capped brood, but more than a couple of opened queen cells. Something happened in there...

Today's inspection made me feel much better. First of all, they were the most docile they've ever been. With the exception of the one bee who just quietly hung out on my veil, not a single bee buzzed my face, bumped my head, or even seemed to notice I was in there. This is quite an improvement over the behavior they were exhibiting a few weeks ago, when there were a few pissy bees patrolling the patio.

There is capped brood everywhere. They laying pattern is beautiful - hardly an empty cell. There are eggs and larvae of all stages clearly visible. This is what you want to see to know that there is a queen in there and she is doin' her thing.

Last inspection, I did see some wet honey. This time, there was actually quite a lot of the wet honey and even some capped honey on a few frames.

There are still two frames that have not been drawn out, but the other eight are almost completely drawn out. This is a slow improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.

And finally, I saw the queen. She had shuffled all the way to the back side of the tenth frame. I hadn't even planned to pull the frame out since there's nothing on it, but I did and there she was. She's a pretty light amber color and was congratulated for doing such a good job of laying all of those baby bee eggs.

Now, I just hope thy keep up this good behavior and hopefully kick honey production into high gear. If they don't I'm going to have to re-think a lot of Christmas presents...

THIS is what we need some more of.