brood!

It's St Patrick's Day. Another sunny day in the 60's - hard to believe for March.

I used an extractor yesterday to remove honey from three frames (another 15 lbs of honey for me). It's the first time I've used an extractor. I rented it - $15 for 2 days from my local bee club. Pretty good. It's a bulky piece of equipment to store at home. If the club location wasn't a 40 min drive from me, I would surely rent it regularly. But I may consider buying one instead next time.

I opened the hive today to replace two unworked frames with these newly extracted frames. I put the unworked frames in the hive last week, taking out two frames full of honey and making space for brood in my honey-bound hive.

I was so excited to see the bees' progress today! In a week, the bees had built up half of one fresh frame. Since the other fresh frame was I unworked, I took it out and substituted the extracted frame. Most exciting, there were many, very tiny, curled up larvae in the hive!!! Yeah! There's a queen and she's laying.

Last week a few bees were bringing in a very pale yellow pollen. Today many bees have this same pale yellow pollen. My guess is willow pollen. That's a big source of pollen and nectar for them. An exciting day.