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Inspect First Beehive

3:08
10:03
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At 3:08 in

What to look for 1 Week after Installing a Package of Honey Bees....pastured poultry talk

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What happens here

Wearing a full bee suit and using a smoker to calm the bees, the beekeeper carefully lifts the outer cover of the first hive. He gently applies smoke to the hive entrance and then cracks open the inner cover, adding more smoke to encourage the bees to move downwards and eat honey (which distracts them and makes them less aggressive). The beekeeper then checks the queen cage, confirming that the queen has been released and the candy plug has been consumed. He also removes burr comb, which is excess comb built in unintended areas of the hive. Next, he carefully pulls out a frame, looking for healthy bee activity, the presence of eggs and larvae (indicating a productive queen), and stored honey and pollen. Finding all these elements confirms the hive's good health.

Goal: The beekeeper approaches the first beehive, applies smoke to calm the bees, removes burr comb, and inspects a frame to confirm the queen's release, presence of eggs, larvae, honey, and pollen, indicating a healthy colony.

Tools and materials

  • Bee Suit
  • Gloves
  • Hive Tool
  • Smoker
  • Burr Comb N/A
  • Queen Cage

What they say

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colony. While I'm looking in the hive, I'm going to walk you through exactly what I'm thinking and what I'm looking at. Okay, first I got my smoker and we put a little bit of smoke. It's kind of windy out today. So, we cracked the hive. We put a little smoke in there to calm them down. Try to smoke the bees down a little bit in the hive. They do not seem happy. I don't know why. So, we're going to reach in here, check our queen cage. We're looking at our queen cage and the the bees have eaten the candy out and the queen is gone. Okay, so that's good. We'll just toss that to the side. I'm going to get rid of this. This is a spacer. I think you need to know not only what I'm doing, but a lot of what I'm thinking while I'm doing this. Okay. So, I'm looking in here and assessing the quantity of bees that I see, the activity of the bees, and I'm getting this old burr comb off of here, which if you're a big- time holistic person, this stuff right here, you could uh set it to the side and make lip balm and stuff out of it if you're ready to start doing that kind of fun stuff. I'm going to pull my frame out, the one that looks like it has the most bees on it. And what I'm looking for on this frame is I'm looking for bee activity. Everybody looks great. I'm looking for eggs. I'm looking for honey. I'm looking for larvae. And I see all of that. I need not see anything else in this hive. This is very healthy. This is very good. I don't need to see the queen. She's in here. She's laying. She's doing good. How crowded is the hive is the next thing that I'm thinking about. It doesn't seem very crowded. Everything seems pretty pretty mellow, pretty chill in the hive. Actually going to add another super. The reason I'm adding another super is that this super is full of honey. It'll give the bees a good start. Put my entrance reducer on in the lowest setting right here. And then I'm going to put my hive top feeder on. I put my hive top feeder on with the cage right here that the bees climb up to in the back so that if I do have robbing, they can't just go in and go up the front. They can they have to go through the hive to get right here guys and gals. It's good to have two hives. Okay? So, you can compare what the health of one hive is to the other hive. We're going to open the other box up now. Okay. Once again, we've got our smoker. Let's smoke the entrance. Crack the top. Smoke inside. Smoke these bees

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