They are busy as bees...

Joe and I went today to check on the bees. The second deep box had comb drawn out on 6 of the 10 frames already, which means:
We are close to our own honey
The bee colony require their own supply of honey in order to survive the winter. They need 60-70 pounds for themselves, which is in the bottom 2 deep supers. If we took that honey, they would surely die, and this would all be over after this year. Since we want to continue, we will let tham have their honey, but we will ask them to give us some also. On our next visit, we will add a shallow super with 10 frames. It is a smaller super than the bottom two, but that is fine because we will have only honey in it- no eggs. We can go into more detail about it on our next visit...

The bees have also waxed over the feeder holes- which means they do not need our sugar syrup anymore. I can not believe the amount of liquid that was in the combs they have drawn out! It seems as if right now, ther is more honey than bees- but we did see eggs, so the queen is still doing her job. I would guess that the headcount of bees is close to 40,000- probably more than that. So, to find the queen is hard now. As long as ther are eggs, and we can see one in each comb, then we have to trust that things are groovy with her. Of course, we both came with no camera, so current pictures are not available. Soon to come...

Success!

The sugar was a good call... the bees have eaten the whole gallon- faster than I have seen them feed on anything we have supplied thus far. There was wax everywhere- and more importantly-eggs everywhere. No signs of any supersedure cells, either, which means all is well for everyone. We added the second deep super (box) with 10 additonal frames... hopefully they will fill it fast- they seem very busy. I also added a screen bottom board onto the bottom- this is basically a foundation with a screen- to provide better ventilation in the upcoming winter months.