First major check on the hive

Sunday the 17th of April was a great day with plenty of sun and only a little wind. I can really feel the summer coming. So today will be the first major check on the hive.

But first things first. I did not get a chance to disinfect my equipment during the fall last year so this had to be done first.

All boxes was scraped to get as much propolis off and then it was all sprayed with Virkon S which do its work and then decompose afterwards. So all I had to do was spray and leave to dry.

All minor equipment was soaked in household ethanol for several hours and the leftover propolis can then be scraped off easily - this was a tip from another beekeeper that I read in a magazine and it works beautifully :o) It is very effective, and the equipment can just be left to dry in the kitchen sink and then is look as good as new.

Then it was time to go through the hive. First I weighed the hive and it had gained weight for the first time - so the honey collection has started.

The slope on the curve 0.044 kg or 44g corresponds to the average daily loss in mass during the winter. This is almost the same as last year where the daily loss was about 40g

The family is now very big and more than half of the 10 plates in the winter box contained sealed breeding cells. Also pollon was present and almost a full plate with recently harvested honey - the honey cells are a bit darker than the cell from the winter feeding.

Furthermore the edges of some of the breeding plates contained cells for drones. These cells are a bit bigger than the cells for the normal working bees. This means that it is definitely time to insert the drone plate - a plate were the bee can built freely which they will dedicate for drones.

So I removed the plate furthest away from the entrance which was the only one containing winter feeding and it was still almost full and weighing about 2 kg. Then moved two plates containing fresh honey back and inserted the drone plate. Hereafter the 6 plates with the breeding cells were found and finally the plate with pollen by the entrance. This was almost exactly how the hive developed last year

Since the bees already started to collect honey I decided to add a second box today too. I was a bit surprised that the bees were already investigating it less than a hour after I assembled the hive - guess the bees were more than ready for the expansion of their hive.

I all looks great. Unfortunately I did not find the queen, but judging from the size of the hive, she must be doing fine.