in the words of Tom Petty... the waiting is the hardest part

We checked on the bees this evening. It had been 2 weeks since our last visit when we removed their sugar water food source and 4 weeks since installation. Wow, they really look good! The son-in-law of the folks who's land we have the hive on was there too today; just in town for 10 days to paint their house. I don't think he actively has bees but does seem to know a bit about them.

So, we pulled a few frames and took a look. Saw lots of brood and even had a few pupae fall out from a frame. The frames were noticeably heavier too. When watching my wife pull out frames I thought I saw some liquid too.... We didn't see the queen but at least saw a lot of activity. It even seemed like more bees were around.

The son-in-law with us mentioned about not disturbing the hive too much and he is right. Each time we do take a look some of the comb gets broke, pupae may fall out or get crushed, and I'm sure it must stress them out a bit. So it's the waiting game now. We'll probably check in with them again in two weeks or so but will try to not actually pull any frames unless we think we need to. I actually came across a good posting today about how to inspect bee hives on Linda's Bees site. She has a LOT of good stuff on her site and I read it often.

So, there was one thing I thought was kind of exciting tonight. Remember I said I saw some liquid drop? When I was putting away the smoker I saw a drop of liquid on it too. Sticky liquid.... Honey? or just nectar? I'm gonna say honey which is kind of exciting. They are producing and eventually we should get some honey harvested. Awesome!