Today, with the help of our bee mentor, we successfully completed our second hive inspection. Our bees seem happy and behave well but neither hive is taking a lot of sugar water. I had sugar water mixed and ready to add but seeing that we didn’t need it I was told I could freeze it short term (good to know!) Both colonies have eggs/larvae so we know the queen is in there! Good signs. Progress is being made. They are working to draw out the frames that we added and maybe in another week or two they’ll be ready for another eight frames of foundation (the second brood box). An established hive would have a beekeeper adding supers for honey about this time…hopefully that will be us in another year!
The little beekeeper did smoke the hives today…just a little. Wanted to give them a heads up that we were coming in. He did well with it and the bees responded accordingly. We did learn a good smoker tip today…when finished with the smoker, plug it with grass. It saves on the fuel and you don’t have to wait as long for it to burn out and cool!
Other things we need to learn…the life cycle of the bee! We need to study and understand this. I think it will make us better beekeepers. Stay tuned and we’ll share what we learn. I mean doesn’t everyone want to know how long a bee lives?!?!? The teacher in me will have to get an interesting blog going on the topic once I understand it all myself!
But for today, I’m so grateful that both hive inspections have gone smoothly. The bees are buzzing but they don’t come at you and they certainly don’t come at you in masses. Apparently this is not always the case. Sometime there really are “mean bees”. I guess it’s genetic. In those cases, because no one likes working with mean bees even if they are producing honey, a beekeeper might attempt to re-queen the colony. Sounds like a cool process but one I hope I never have to tackle due to aggressive bees! Thankful for the sweet little honey bees that are working hard from our backyard and hoping to avoid any/all mean bees of the world!
-Worker Bee 2021
Howards' Hives and Honey 
Yes, we do want to know the life expectancy of bees! That was one of my kiddos questions. Along with how much honey can you expect from one hive and what do bees do in the winter time? I have instructed my kids if we wait for update blogs we will probably get answers to these questions 🙂 Seems like things are running smoothly over there. We are excited to see and hear all about it in person soon!
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