First visit

It was about two weeks since we moved the bees from our porch to my mentors bee yard. Dingo had been bugging me for a while to plan a trip and I really wanted to see how they were doing too. I put the call in to let my mentor know we were planing on coming over in the evening hours before it got dark, so most the bees would be home and not as busy as they would have in the middle of the day. Its been really hot out so I wanted a bit of night time so it wouldn't be too stressful on the bees. We brought our camera, smoker and jacket but forgot our hive tool. Gotta remember to have that every time!

Bad news first; one of the swarms just up and left. The ones from penn hills unfortunately. I read somewhere that if the bees are relocated too close to their swarm point that there is a good chance they would just swarm again to a new location so thats probably what happened. Its disappointing but that kind of stuff happens and I still got to enjoy the experience of removing the swarm from that neighborhood.

Since I brought my bees over Jim (aforementioned mentor) told me he was getting swamped with swarm calls at least another 7 calls in the two weeks; which was odd cause I have not gotten any. Maybe Ian (bee control) thinks I'm too busy with school. I guess I should be thankful because I don't have the space for bees just yet but Jim said he didn't mind if I brought over more swarms and hives. I know he's running low on equipment and he is planning on harvesting some honey in early July.

Thing 1 and 2 are doing fantastic, both built up into the top box twords the right so during the inspection I flipped the boxes to encourage them to build in the bottom (now top) box as well. We had a good 3-4 frames with capped brood, honey in the corners, and nice solid brood pattern. I didn't see either of the queens but I wasn't really looking for them. We poked some of the caps from the honey in the corners and had our first sample. It was really light tasting and sweet. It looked clear as opposed to the orange/gold tint that honey from the stores have. Jim says its from the wild lotus flowers located somewhere in the near by forest. There were also some really bright colored pollen. Reds, oranges, and yellows that the bees used in some of the more empty frames.

All is well! I'm excited to sometime soon get our own property so that I can visit the yard more often, if only to watch them fly as they go about their day. So relaxing.