Top Bar Hive Inspection- 1wk with the new colony

       One week ago today I installed my first package of bees into my handmade top bar hive, and I am here to tell you that things are going GREAT! Before beginning this adventure I made sure to read all the beekeeping books at my local library, as well as I did a fair amount of Google University studying on the subject.  All my research really got me excited about bees, they are so intelligent and their colony structure is so complex, I knew this was going to become an obsession, and I was correct. It has only been 7 days since I introduced my bees to their new home, and I have thought about them wondering how things were going at least 789,564 times a day, lol. Despite my desire to go look at them frequently, I have refrained. It is advised to not open your hive too much or the bees will begin to get annoyed and either start to sting, or potentially relocate all together, and I certainly do not want that to happen. Also, the timing of when you open the hive needs to be planned as well. Try to open your hive during the day when the workers are out of the hive collecting honey, and choose a day when the weather

is warm and sunny. Opening your hive on a chilly or rainy day will surely only get your bees angry with you. 

        Today was a nice day, mid 70's and sunny, perfect conditions for opening the hive. I had my trusty side kick with me, my dad, and we were really excited to see what we had in the hive. Before heading up to the hive, which is located a good distance from the house and sits nicely near the garden, we dawned our protective gear. Some beekeepers say that they never use any protection and that they have never been stung. My thoughts on that, good for them! Me however, I always air on the side of caution. I am new to beekeeping, and to be honest, the idea of thousands of bees swarming around me in the event I do something to make them angry makes me very anxious, so to prevent me from having any anxiety when approaching the hive, I always will have on my leather gloves with arm shields, and my beekeepers coat with protective hood. I also always where pants and closed shoes. My dad however only heads to the hive wearing his protective hat, and one time his gloves, and 

he prefers to wear shorts. In his words " I'm not afraid of getting stung". So you make your own judgement call based on how comfortable you are around your bees. They can sense the changes in your hormones, and if you are anxious with a lot of adrenaline going, they will pick up on that and potentially feel threatened by that. So unless your cool as a cucumber, suit up! 
      Also before heading to the hive I always grab the smoker. Smoking your bees before opening the hive sends them into survival mode. The scent of burning wood makes the bees think that the woods are on fire, in which case their survival mode tells them to eat as much honey as the can as quickly as they can so that if they have to leave their home they will have food for the journey. So by sending a few puffs of smoke near their entrance it helps to keep the bees on the combs working instead of flying around you inspecting your every move. The only other thing I take up to the hive is a horse hair brush to gently move bees if needed. 
      After we smoked the bees gently for a few minutes, I began opening the hive. I decided to easiest and most non-disturbing way to see what was going on was to remove some top bars from the back section which is still closed off to the bees at the moment. ( from the first blog post you will remember I only gave them 10 top bars of hive to work with. The reason for this is to keep their living space relatively small at first so that they feel it is a safe place and easy to defend. The bigger the hive at first, the more anxious they will feel about having to defend it, so start small. ) After I removed those extra bars, I simply slid the divider back and exposed that glorious comb, as pictured above. We have a total of 5 top bars with comb on them. The combs are around 9 inches wide and roughly 9 inches long at the lowest point. I am so impressed with how much they have accomplished in only 7 days, just amazing. 
     There were a few things we needed to accomplish when opening the hive today, besides just wanting to look at them:) We needed to make sure that the queen was roaming around and had been released from her cage. I was able to see her on the 4th frame deep. She was busy scurrying about. Aside from just visually confirming that she was in there, I also needed to look at the comb to check for signs of larvae, which I was also able to find. There were many cells showing signs of future life, as well as many cells being filled with beautiful amber honey! I'm only a beginner beekeeper, but after comparing my research of what a new hive should be doing to what my hive is doing, I would say were are right on track. After confirming queen and larvae, we closed the hive up pretty quickly so the bees could get back to work without worrying what I was up to.  
       Next weekend I will open the hive again with the goals of checking to see how many top bars have comb on them out of the 10 they have. Right now they have built on 5 of 10 top bars, if next weekend they have built on at least 7 of the ten top bars, I will pull the divider out and give them access to the remaining 12 top bars in the hive. I will also continue to monitor the comb for signs of larvae and keep my eye out for any developing queen cells, which could be a sign of potential trouble ( queen cells are large larvae cells that they make to hang on the outside of the comb, in which they rear new queens. If they are making queen cells it can indicate that my current queen is not producing, or that they are rebelling against her, or worse yet, that they are preparing to swarm and leave behind a new queen and only a few workers...that would be bad.) 
     Thats all for this week...till next time.