Luke and I have been busy at work preparing more bee equipment for our growing hives. With the successful mating of my small walk away nuc we will be up to 11 hives total, that’s a lot of bees for only our second year. Luke ordered 100 frames that we needed to assemble ourselves. We went to town putting them together, adding wax foundation and fishing line for the bees to build comb off of. It was not hard work but a little on the mundane side. It is much more affordable to order the frames this way, not to mention it will be nice when we go to harvest honey because we can harvest the honey and comb together easily! We both assume though that we will not have any honey to harvest this year as we want to save the stores for the bees this winter. 

Unfortunately I forgot to snap a photo of me putting in the wax starter strips so these are not the completed pieces. Without the wax starter strips the bees would create all sorts of wacky comb in these frames. We also checkerboard these frames with fully built out frames to ensure the bees do not get crazy with their comb build up. We also did a little hive check on our new Saskatraz queens, both are laying well and their hives are building up the comb fairly quickly. I went ahead and fed a pollen patty and 1:1 sugar ratio feed to both of my smaller hives in hopes that this would help them to continue to build up their frames. The photo below shows the queen with a red dot laying within a cell. The dots indicate the year the queens are born so depending on their color will coordinate with the year.   We also pulled a view table spoons of honey comb out of the hive as we were fixing some of the wacky comb the bees were building. Dang! Their honey is delicious. Thank you ladies for making some misshaped comb so we could benefit. I like to chew it with the comb until I have a nice little chunk of wax left. Bees wax is good in moderation but to much can constipate you.