New Bees

I got the new boxes painted just in time. Roberta and I went and did a cutout from a sprinkler box at Lisa Edelstein's house.


She has a beautiful yard overlooking the Silver Lake Reservoir. She's had a couple hives set up house in her yard recently. Here's a picture she took from up on her deck while she watched us do the cut out.

The bees were really mellow, even when we were cutting their comb out and attaching it to the frames in the new box. It seemed like we got the queen because the workers were doing a lot of fanning and gradually all of the stray bees marched up into the box to join their sisters. Roberta vacuumed some stragglers out of the sprinkler box but there weren't many bees flying around by the time we were done.

I'm hoping that they stay because they are such nice bees. My first hive seems much more protective of their space. So far they seem to be doing OK next to each other. You can really tell how much more active the first hive is though.

New Hive Boxes

I got three new boxes for the bees. One is meant to go on top of the existing hive when I get some more bees to put in. If you separate them with a layer of newspaper, by the time they chew through they think they are from the same hive. If there are two queens one will get axed. My hope is to increase the number of bees I have to make the hive stronger. The more there are the better they can defend themselves. Roberta says it's better to have one big hive than two small ones.


But I still got a couple of deep boxes to start a new hive. Here you can see the two sizes, a medium and a deep. The medium will go on the existing hive which already has two mediums. The two new deeps will be to start a new hive. Some people like the mediums because they are easier to move, but I'm hoping that once I get the deeps in place I'll never move them again. Starting with two deeps will give the future hive more room and keep them from getting too crowded. If they feel crowded they will swarm and take half the bees with them.


The boxes came put together but I took them apart so I could glue joints.




The glue should do a good job of holding the sides together but I also added some brads.


I got a layer of primer on them. Paint will have to wait for tomorrow.