Cleaning the equipment and eating marshmallows

The weekend was also spend cleaning the rest of the equipment for the coming season. Everything was scraped clean the best I could and then sprayed with Virkon S.

Then I just left the stuff in the garden to dry.

I had 10 frames from when I got my bee family last year, that I could not send for melting since I do not know the origin of the wax (I only send pesticide free wax for melting). Instead I decided to burn them - and roast marshmallows with Julius.

I know that bees wax is used for candles but still I had no idea that they would burn so intensly. The picture below are flames from just ONE frame! Julius was a bit scared.....

....... but as soon as the marshmallows were ready all was well again :o)

Hive check - wow, it is a big family....

I did a check on the hive the 24/4 and then again today, the 5/5. The 24th I added an extra box for the bees to expand the family. Today  when I checked up on the hive the second box was quite heavy and all frames were full. Amazing that it is done in just over a week. I have now given up weighing the hive - it is simply too heavy for my suitcase scale.

Furthermore I have added the drone frame, and the 24th two compartment were almost built. Today, the cells were almost full of drone breeding. For some reason the middle compartment was untouched? I cut the two plates with drone cells out to reduce the amount of varoa mites since they favor drone cells when breeding. The drone frame was slow put back into the hive not to squish too many bees.

Well, today was just a quick checkup and I wanted to add the third box - which is for collecting honey only. Between the second and the third box a net was placed with holes so small that the queen cannot pass. Now it is time to get some honey! :o). The net is on the left. The plastic lid goes on top of the hive just under the "roof"

Well taking out the drone cells I noticed that one of the cells looked very much like a queen cell. That would mean that there is a good chance that the bees will be likely to start swarming late this month. I need to go through the entire hive and check for queen cells and break them before they hatch. Hopefully it is just a drone cell looking like a queen cell. (It is the elongated cell which is visible on the right side of the drone cells). The brush is excellent to get the bees off the frames without hurting them.

Checking the cells of the drone cells for varoa mites is much easier after one day in the freezer. Then the wax and honey become stiff and brittle and breaks up very easily. I will check up on this later this week.

It was raining a bit this evening so it was not the best time to check the hive, but they are expanding much faster than I was expecting, so the extra box is also a preventive measure to keep the bees from swarming.

Fingers crossed that they will stay!