You Can't Ask for Better Weather Than This!

Mark and I look forward to days like yesterday with good reason.  The Texas flowers were blooming like crazy, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, no humidity in the air and all of our bees are happy. What a great day for beekeeping! (Click on photos to enlarge)

Notice the "fur" on this bee's back legs.  This is her pollen basket
which allows for pollen to stick easily to her for transporting back to the hive.

Dew berries are all around our hives. It's great to see these fruits
pop up as a result of our bee's work pollinating the flowers!

Our spring flowers in Texas are thriving!  There are so many different varieties.  All of our hives are doing very well.  We expected that we might experience swarming this spring, but so far so good. All of our hives are hard at work gathering as much nectar as possible. The weather was surprisingly cool during our visit; 70 degrees and sunny. The bees were very calm and easy to work with.

A beautiful day in the bee yard!

The population in hive 03 is booming.  This colony has two deep hive boxes full of bees and honey.  They were ready for more space to expand, so we added a queen excluder and a super for them to grow. The super had 9 frames, each with drawn comb.  Some of the comb was damaged, but we expect that the bees will repair the comb and add honey.

Hive 04 has two deep hive boxes, but they are still drawing comb in the top box.  This was an empty box that we added during our last visit, so it will take a little time for these bees to fill up the space. We made no adjustments during this visit.

Hive 04 bees working on drawing new comb on the frame.

Hive 04 bees with capped honey.

Hive 05 already had a super on top of the two deep hive boxes, which we added during our last visit.  The bees are still drawing comb on these frames.

New comb added to the super frames.

This comb was damaged around the middle, but the bees have
worked hard to repair it.

We saw our queen in hive 06.  This colony has two deep hive boxes full of bees. They continue to draw comb in the top deep, so we did not yet add a super.

Here is the hive 06 queen; near the bottom center of the deep hive frame.
She is large and apricot in color.

We were most surprised by hive 08 during this visit.  When we last visited, we saw our queen, but felt she was not laying eggs well.  The population was tiny and dwindling, so at our last visit, we added two frames of bees, brood and honey to this colony.  Like magic, the colony is rebounding.  We saw our queen again during this visit and she also has a good deal of larvae.  We are hopeful this colony will continue down this path and grow their population.

Hive 08 is rebounding.

Hive 08 larvae near the center of the frame.

Hive 08 queen with capped brood.

Mark mows around the hives so the bees have easy access to the landing boards.  It also helps make access into the hive more difficult for other insect invaders. We were so pleased at how well our hives are doing.  It was a great day trip for us!

Our hives at the end of the day.