Third week after installations

Log Hive Inspection #1

On Wednesday this week I scheduled a full inspection of the log hive colony with my friends to check on the progress establishing brood and resources. My friend Eli and I donned our gloves and veils while my partner Harry stood back to take photos.

We’re using pretty minimal supplies to disturb the bees as little as possible:

• A smoker to distract bees and mask our scents; the smoke will drive the bees into the hive instead of flying around us. They will begin consuming honey to prepare for an emergency swarm, as they are sensing that their hive is burning and they need to relocate. The smell of the smoke can also interrupt their alarm pheromone to keep the bees from becoming agitated and marking us, as well as covering our mammalian stink. The fuel we are burning in the smoker is wood shavings provided by TESC woodshop.
• A spray bottle of 1:1 sugar water solution; this is also used to distract and calm the bees, but with a sticky tasty treat.
• A set of frame grips to safely lift and maneuver frames for examination. It can be difficult to remove frames by hand without damaging comb or harming bees, and when a frame is as large as mine are, they can be very heavy with honey, pollen, brood, and bees.
• A paint scraper/hive tool used to pry apart the top bars of the frames. Bees use propolis and wax to try and fill in cracks in the hive, and usually try to secure the spots where their combs or frames connect with the cavity interior. This commonly results in frames being stuck together and to the hive’s top rails.

Some disturbance of propolis or wax is needed to pull out frames for examination, but we are attempting to keep as much intact as possible and to not remove materials from inside the hive. Bridge comb was present crossing between a few of the frames, which was broken apart upon removal. It will likely be quickly repaired, as none of the wax was removed from the hive. We make sure frames are replaced in the same order and orientation as they were prior, as reorganization can be disorienting and therefore disruptive for colony progress.

On the left is a honeybee life cycle diagram from the Beekeeping for Dummies series and webpage. The image on the right is from my hive! This is a piece of perpendicular bridge comb with brood that was broken when we removed the frame. I thought it was so cool because it looked just like the diagrams I’d seen in beekeeping literature describing the progression of growing brood, but in real life!

First impressions were that the colony had maintained their large population. Workers covered every frame and still flew in and out of the hive around us. I did not see any dead bees in the hive or around the hive entrance where they would be disposed of.

It had only been 17 days since the colony had been installed, which is not long enough for any worker or drone brood to emerge (see diagram above), but every frame had some amount of capped brood. Four of the frames were nearly covered in brood, and some appeared to be larger drone cells. We checked for queen cells and found 2, but neither appeared to have been hatched open or containing any eggs.

This leads me to believe that the colony population will explode within the next two weeks with many workers and a few drones. With the number of bees already in the hive, this mass-emergence may push the colony’s population close to the limits of the cavity’s capacity and induce a swarm within a few weeks. It’s very exciting news, as the intention of the log hive is to produce many swarms. I’ll be deliberating how to manage this in the meantime; whether to perform an artificial swarm, or split, or to try and catch them when they do swarm.

On the rough sawn walls of the hive, I saw some propolis deposition as I had hoped; bright orange droplets made from collected tree resins. Workers should continue to create a propolis envelope around the hive to seal and protect its interior from moisture, parasites, and pathogens (read more about the the details and reasoning for the hive’s design by clicking my green button).

Wax comb had been drawn out on foundations across the whole hive from edge to edge. The tops of three of the frames had significant amounts of sealed honey on both sides. I did not see very much pollen being stored, but I have observed many workers returning to the hive with corbicula, or pollen baskets, full of bright orange pollen.