After being gone a week, I was afraid to check the hive. I went in and found honey all over the the tops of the comb. It was beginning to look like a thriving hive. Just on a really small scale.
I called Jose and told him I was interested in getting a hive. He said he would call me back. He called at 6:00 a.m. and was here by 6:30. He had one of those standard white bee boxes in the back of his truck. He carried it, without any protection except for his hat, across my front yard, through the gate, past the pool and to the far corner of the yard. I put on my hat, veil, gloves, and brought out the smoker. He lit the smoker, smoked them good, then opened up the hive.
There was propolis and burr comb on the top. 8 frames were full of bees and two had drawn out comb but nothing stored yet. It was a really busy hive.
"Where's the queen?" I asked.
"Bee keepers don't spend their time going through all the frames to find the queen. She's there. There's eggs and larvae, she is doing her job. I have hundreds of hives to check. I can't be looking at each frame trying to find the queen. If there is brood, there's a queen."
It was odd to me to hear the business point of view as opposed to the organic beekeeper point of view. The TBH people are always looking for the queen. The professional keeper wants honey stores and pollination jobs. He wants to control the mites and make sure things are increasing. That's about it.
We put the lid back on and left those bees along. Jose got stung in the arm and the nasty bee that stung him landed on my veil. It gave me an earful. The high pitched whine sounds like being told off with a helium hum. I was definitely getting the message that those bees were pissed off and disoriented.
We returned to the TBH where Jose found a nice brood pattern. Maybe they will make it.
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