Beekeeping Basics

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Using your hive tool as a lever, you now carefully pry up one corner of a spare frame until you can grab that rack's wooden top edge with one hand. You then pry up the opposite top corner, grab that end, too, andpulling slowly so you don't crush any workerslift the entire bee covered frame out of the hive. Some of the cells you examine are capped with white beeswax (indicating the presence of ready-to-harvest honey). Most of the hexagonal units, though, are unsealed and contain clearly visible honey. Since such ambrosia needs further curing by the bees, you know it's not yet time to make your first harvest.

In fact, you're just about to seal up the hive and leave for the day when you recall an old apiarist's saying: "There're two kinds of folks who fool with honeybees: the bee keepers (those who conscientiously work with their bees) . . and the bee- havers (the sluggards who have hives but for the most part leave their bees to the insects' own good or ill fortunes)." You know that the chief trait distinguishing a beekeeper from a beehaver is the willingness to examine and learn from the brood chamber . . . the heart of the hive. So, since you'd like to become a true apiarist, you decide to take a practice "trip" into your main hive body and see how your queen is doing.

After carefully replacing the frame you'd previously taken out, you give the entire super a few puffs with your smoker and then start prying that honey-holding box free from the brood chamber. Even though the super has been on the hive only a short while, the bees have already stuck it tightly to the brood box, and you have to free all four corners carefully with your hive tool and then slowly twist the upper story sideways to break the gummy seals.

The super's not very heavy (if it were full, it would weigh at least 40 pounds), so you're able to lift it off easily and set it on the overturned outer cover. You then grab your smoker again and give the bees at the top of the brood chamber a few brief puffs.

One by one, now, you pull out a few separate frames from the central hive "room". Except for the less occupied outer racks, each frame you examine is—as some beekeepers say—"slam full of brood". A large semicircle of dark convex cappings covers much of the surface (some cells contain uncapped white larvae) . . . and honey or pollen is stored in the frames' corners.

You don't happen to spot the queen as you forage through the chamber. (Many beginners stare at the moving masses of bees in their hives and despair of ever identifying the large-abdomened egg-layer. But rest assured that—as another oldtime beekeeping saying states—"you'll know her when you see her".) However, since your colony is so full of fine brood, the hive is obviously healthy and "queenright". So you don't bother the bees by needlessly searching for her today but, instead, carefully reassemble the hive and head back home.

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