Honeybee_ Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper - C. Marina Marchese [26]
I was relieved to observe that my honeybees were calm. They crawled over the tops of the frames, ignoring my presence. I was taught that when the worker bees line up along the top bars of the frames and begin staring at you, it’s time to smoke again. But these bees seemed to have no interest in me. I peered inside the hive and saw the queen cage sitting between the two frames where I placed it last weekend. A wave of anticipation came over me as I reached in between the frames to dislodge it. As I removed the cage, along with it came a pristine white piece of burr comb. Burr comb is a piece of beeswax honeycomb that the bees make where there is more than ⅜ inch of space anywhere within the hive. This exact measurement is Langstroth’s bee space, and it is the perfect size for a worker bee to pass through. And, as Langstroth discovered, if the bees detect this amount of space anywhere in the hive, they build comb to fill it in. Such a space had opened up in my hive because we’d removed the fifth frame to make space for the queen cage. Once the queen cage was removed and the fifth frame set back in its place, there would be no extra space, and the bees would make wax on the frame, as they should.
I saw immediately that the sugar cork had been eaten away entirely, and peering into the tiny cage, I could see no one was left inside. My queen had been released into her castle, and her attendants had joined her. I placed the empty cage, with the burr comb still attached, to the side so as not to damage it. It would be the first of many beekeeping specimens that I would acquire and save.
Now it was time for me to remove a few frames and see if the bees had drawn out the beeswax foundation into cells. Frames number four or six were good choices since they were on either side of where the queen cage had hung. And, it is in the middle of the hive body where the bees generally cluster and the queen begins laying eggs. Using my hive tool, I first gently pried the outermost frame away from the others and placed it on the grass. Then, gently sliding the other frames to the side, I lifted the sixth frame from the hive and held it at a five-degree angle to the sun, just like Mr. B had taught me. I could see that the foundation had been drawn out into beautiful, pure white cells, and they were already filled with a shimmering, clear liquid that was obviously nectar. Bees build the cells at a five-degree angle to the beeswax foundation, which makes it tricky for beekeepers to spot the new eggs. But if you hold the frame at the correct angle to the sun, you can spot the eggs, which should be sitting at the bottom of the cells. Staring closely at those cells and maneuvering the frame till the sun hit it just right, I could finally see the practically microscopic eggs. My queen had begun laying in the center of the frame in the typical oval pattern that I recognized as the brood nest. A single egg was placed inside of each cell, and she had barely missed a cell along the way. This consistency is the sign of a good, full brood pattern. Missing more than a few cells would have created a spotty laying pattern, which could mean a queen that was old or failing.
Above the brood nest was an arc of cells that held a spectrum of colored pollen—yellow, gold, brown, some with a greenish tint, and even red—each representing a distinctive species of plant. Between the pollen and the top bar of the frame were freshly capped cells filled with honey.
Several bees crawled on my sleeves and around the top of the frames without paying me much mind. Their faint buzzing allowed me to remain calm and work quickly. As I was about to replace the space where the queen cage hung with the fifth frame, I noticed a group of bees were festooning, an adorable behavior in which the bees hang on to one another, creating a chain across the space between