We finished building our Layens hives and installed our first swarm of bees that we caught.
The swarm moved into an empty 7 frame bait hive (no pre-drawn comb on the frames) on May 1st or 2nd. So, in just under 3 weeks they have a quarter to a third of 6 frames drawn with comb. I wasn’t expecting them to build comb that quickly.
We saw loads of brood comb – comb full of larval bees waiting to hatch, and some capped honey. We were pretty excited to locate the Queen on the last frame that we pulled. She’s lovely!
We got the bees into their new spacious abode without any stings from overly aggressive bees. I hope they are as docile as the bees we already have.
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| Sarah putting the finishing touches on the first of three Layens hives (20 frames each). |
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| Transferring honey bees from the swarm trap (foreground) into a Layens horizontal hive (background). |
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| Happy Beekeeper! |
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| The Queen (elongated abdomen) is in the center. |