This was a busy weekend for us! We inspected the hives and found 5 out of 7 hives needed a new deep box to give the honeybees more space. We were happy to have a 3 day weekend to build the additional boxes and frames. At one point, I ended up going to Sally Beauty Supply Store to buy 2 pounds of bobby pins, which we use to secure the wax foundations in the frames. I definitely got a strange look from the sales clerk when I said I needed about 1600 bobby pins.
In one of our hives, beekeeper Tim found the honeybees had built an extra frame on the side of a frame, but it was all drone comb. The reason it was probably all drone comb was that the honeycomb itself wasn’t built off of a wax foundation. The foundation is stamped with hexagons the perfect size for worker cells, and when left to their own devices to plan honeycomb, it is often uneven and so the honeybee queen lays drone eggs there.
Tim decided to give all the comb to the silkie chickens, and they really enjoyed pecking at all the larvae after they got over their initial skepticism.
We ended up building 8 boxes and 40 frames, with 30 more frames needed to give each honeybee hive a new box. We are still feeding the honeybees sugar water but they have slowed down to 3 quarts or so a week.
I also had some time to take photographs for our ongoing honeybee photo of the day project. Please check us out on your favorite social media website so you can get our daily honeybee photos.