Beekeeping Week 1 - Checking and Feeding

The second bucket feeder arrived and my hubby took the opportunity to check both hives and feed the second hive.  You can see from the image above, the bees in our Honey Super Cell hive have been feasting on the sugar water in the feeder and have polished off about a third of it in the four days between Thursday afternoon and Monday afternoon. 

My dear hubby, Joseph, thought it would be a good idea this time to spray the new frames in the second deep for each hive before taking them down to the hive area so as to minimize time bothering the bees.  He lamented later that he hadn't intended to check them so early (a week to ten days is preferable, but the bucket came in and this was an opportunity to check on things as he fed the foundation hive) and spraying the frames pretty much forced him to add the second deeps before he expected to since we had no way to keep the sprayed frames without attracting ants (we have lots of ants around here).

 At the hives, he did not disturb the frames, though he did look down in between them to check on the bees' activity.  Both hives are showing activity on the new frames, which is a good sign.

 

You can see here that the bees in the Honey Super Cell hive have started building some bur comb, which is basically comb that is not in the desired location.  This is normal in any hive and this particular bur comb is on the feeder tray, which will be removed prior to honey production.

Both hives got a second deep super a bit earlier than expected, but they have plenty of room to move and grow.

The feed tray is placed on top of the second deep now.

The new feed bucket is added to the foundation frame hive.  You can see how full it is compared to the feeder at the top of this post that has been on the Honey Super Cell hive for four days.  The bucket feeder does drip a bit at first, but the bees eat that up and air pressure soon slows the flow from the bucket to what the bees can access without it dripping.

As in the original installation, the medium super is added around the feeder bucket to keep the hive enclosed.  The telescoping cover goes on top and finally.....

The bees hives are all set up to establish strong colonies.  Both have plenty of room to move and grow and sugar water to mimic nectar flow so the bees can focus on building the colony while finding a local nectar flow.