It has almost been a whole week since each of the hives have been filled with three and a half pounds of bees. The queen has now been freed and should start increasing the hives population. It took the workers and drones about four days to chew through the candy to free her. But it happened and the bees freed their queen. Today I made sure that indeed happened and sure enough the queen container was empty. She should now be somewhere in this beehive. Though I have not found her yet.
Animated Gif of my beehive
I can tell they are really building out the frame that the queen was attached to. Its getting heavier with every time I lift it. The bees around just tend to move out of my way as I carefully pick it up. They have not waxed the trays in place yet so I can do all of this with just my hands. My special beekeeping gloves give me more dexterity than most other working gloves.
Its amazing how many bees are on each tray, there must be a thousand right there on this single frame. The white comb can be seen near the top. Also seeing chains of bees was quite interesting. To the left of the frame there is a chain of bees holding together limb by limb. I thought only ants did this.. very cool. This helps with structure until they build out the comb alot more.
I remove the queen container since its now empty. Bees were still interested in the cage as it smelled like the queen I guess. I clipped off the ziptie and broke the wax off from it. Seems they waxed the container onto the frame.
Amazing to see the workers and drones chew through the candy, I was worried they would need my help but in the end they did not. Only the weak hive needed me to manually free the queen.
With every visit they seem more and more calm around me, they are no longer attacking my fuzzy microphone mounted to my DSLR.
Animated Gif of my beehive
After closing up the hive I decided to get video of them entering and exiting their home. With the small entrance reducer in place they seem okay with it and doing well.
Pollen can be seen on the back of a couple of the bees legs, they are collecting it from the local flowers within five miles of the hive and bringing it back home. They will use it to make honey to feed their young and maybe if there's extra I can have some too.
Animated Gif of my beehive
Watching them is always fun, I see them forming circles and one of the bees moves its butt around. I believe this is known as the waggle dance, this dance tells the other bees where the pollen and nectar is near by through a series of movements.
They seem more calm today, when I was messing with their entrance reducer many more were out and guarding the hive. Now its calm and theres a small hole many less guard bees are needed. So they can focus on protecting the inside of the hive instead.
As the sun passes through the overhead trees we get moments of shade. But most of the day the hives are getting sunlight, I faced them south so they should be happy with the arrangement. During winter months facing south will help to keep the hive warm.