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I've been keeping this blog for all of my beekeeping years and I am beginning my 19th year of beekeeping in April 2024. Now there are more than 1300 posts on this blog. Please use the search bar below to search the blog for other posts on a subject in which you are interested. You can also click on the "label" at the end of a post and all posts with that label will show up. At the very bottom of this page is a list of all the labels I've used.

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I began this blog to chronicle my beekeeping experiences. I have read lots of beekeeping books, but nothing takes the place of either hands-on experience with an experienced beekeeper or good pictures of the process. I want people to have a clearer picture of what to expect in their beekeeping so I post pictures and write about my beekeeping saga here.Master Beekeeper Enjoy with me as I learn and grow as a beekeeper.

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Sunday, March 18, 2007

Festooning Bees in New Hives

Today is Sunday and I installed the two nucs into hives on Tuesday afternoon. They've been working for about five full days, but I wanted to see how they were doing since it's easiest for me to inspect on the weekend.

Mellona had built out the starter strip frames just a short way. When I removed the frame below from the hive, the bees were festooning but moved too quickly for us to get a picture (my daughter Valerie was around today and took pictures of the inspection).


















Although the bees in Mellona hadn't built out the wax very far, the bees in Proteus have been very industrious. We caught them festooning as they were building out the frames next to the ones from the nuc. The wax cells look smaller than the ones in Mellona, but I didn't measure. The bees hanging off of each other in a downward line are "festooning" as they make the wax cells.

















Here is a comb from Proteus that has almost been built all the way to the bottom of the frame. The bees here are building smaller cells than in Mellona.


















Here is a bee-covered frame from the nuc that established Proteus. Under all of those bees is a great brood pattern. I have a good feeling about this hive - it is extremely active and a little aggressive, but is enthusiastic, and I always appreciate energy put into a task, as these bees have with creating comb.
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1 comment:

  1. Morning Linda, thanks for putting my link on your blog, your bees and new hives look great, I especially like the idea of the bees making their own comb, I may try it next year. How do you extract the honey from those frames ? excuse my ignorance.

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