She's Alive!

With fingers crossed, I opened the hive today - 3 hours before I had to leave for the airport.  Roxi's hive was crazy, busy and the bees were very focused.  It's strange that you can tell the temperament of a hive the minute you walk up to it - you don't even need to open it.  Just watching the activity at the door gives you a good indication of how well the hive is working as a whole.  The girls just glide in and out with no wasted motion, crawling over one another but in a very familiar and gentle way.  Better than watching the door traffic is listening to the hive.  You just press your ear against the hive boxes and listen - don't even know how to describe this, but you can tell by the frequency of the buzzing whether they are agitated or happy.

It was a happy contented buzzing today.  Great!  As I opened the hive and inspected each box, the girls were so preoccupied I didn't have to use my smoker.  The top most super (box) was fully drawn out with wax and full of honey.  That was a good sign.  But the litmus test was whether I would see any brood in the lower boxes.  Well GLORY BEE I saw eggs, larvae, and capped brood cells.  The queen, she is alive!

Bottom line, the hive is thriving - and best of all, I was able to put a fourth super on the top.  It's not going to be as bad a honey harvest as I originally thought - because of the drought.  But it is still extremely dry.  So dry that I get nervous lighting my smoker.  I've taken to carrying a large fire extinguisher and 4 or 5 bottles of water with me when I do an inspection.

As I left my hives, I snapped a picture of them.  Here you can see the sign that Barton Creek made in order to keep people away from the girls.  You can see how brown and shriveled the brush and grass is - WHEN, OH WHEN, WILL IT RAIN?