Imperfect Attentions

I finally finally finally put the second brood supers on the hives. Each hive is now two levels. But the frames are tortured wood, wire and beeswax foundation. They're very sad looking efforts...many staples and cracked perforated wax foundations...its embarassing. The good part is...the bees won't mind a bit. In fact they will take my imperfect offering and make it perfect. Perfect for their use anyway :)

They weren't too happy about being disturbed this morning. Again I'm afraid I smooshed a few hapless bees. This is a very disturbing hobby. Everytime I open the hive someone gets killed!

This morning I took the wells out and replaced the space with newly minted frames...such as they were, and I placed the new supers, each containing ten more frames atop.

I did not try to inspect the frames or look for a queen. It was too early in the morning for that, and a cool cloudy morning it was too. I know they will appreciate the new digs, but they really weren't appreciating it this morning. Two bees flew up the back of my shirt and made that quite clear.

Two more bee's followed me into the house. I one rescued from the light fixture and put it back outside, it flew away in the direction of the hive. I thought Little Bear ate the other one but Cousin Sandy found it and tried to rescue it. He put it outside, but instead of flying away it sort of fell to the ground. I guess they can't all be saved.

One thing that was quite fun to notice-- while I was in the midst of operations I pushed the frames aside, and two that had been worked together by the bees split apart and golden honey oozed out. It was pretty.

Oh, and even though I didn't look for brood or a queen each hive was buzzing with thousands more bees than I started with, so I think thats a good sign.

:)