Put my nuc aside! ...again

The bees have worked their way to the end frames, and now they are ready to produce honey for us! Some two or three weeks ago bees and brood cells covered our middle frames, but the end frames were untouched. Today, we checked the hive again (for disease actually) and we found that the bees are very healthy and have worked their way to the end frames. There are still many brood cells and larva in the middle frames that are ready to hatch; this is a good indication that there is a queen and a healthy hive at work. The queen lays eggs in a specific (circular) pattern and one of our pulled frames that we observed looked almost textbook-picture perfect. The outer frames are beginning to be filled with bees. The bees have began making comb on top of the foundation in those outer frames. Whereas just a couple of weeks ago you wouldn't have seen a lone bee on the outer most frames. So it is really beginning to produce here, and my father and I predict that this thing will really take off in a month or so.

So, after observation we decided to add the additional super. After taking off the top of the hive we add the Queen Excluder (picture). The purpose (as mentioned in the video) is to keep the queen in the lower part of the hive or brood chamber. This is exactly the point, you want to keep this bottom part of the hive strictly for brood. There will be some pollen and honey, however, the sole purpose of this brood chamber is to serve as a nursery and produce bees. Once the brood chamber begins to fill up, the bees will begin storing their honey in the new super we added. The super will be pure honey because the Queen Excluder is in place. The worker bees are able to fly through the Excluder with their honey, but the queen's size prevents her from getting though the Excluder and laying eggs in the new super.

Hopefully next post will be about bees in my nuc! But, I will allow the post after that to be about honey filled frames from the new super. The final picture will show you the brood chamber separated by the excluder (around the hand) and the additional super on top of that!