Homestead Handbook Beginning with Honeybees

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But no matter how cocky you get, don't abandon that smoker. Smoke pacifies bees. They dive their heads into honey cells and start gobbling up honey. I don't know why . . . maybe the fumes make them think a forest fire's coming and they'd better load up for a long escape trip! But I do know that the one time I left that smoker behind I collected ten years' worth of stings at once!

OK, you're all suited up. Your smoker's lit and burning nicely (you might blow a few puffs on your hands and body to help deodorize yourself), and you're hiveward bound. Approach the colony from the side, so you don't get in the way of foraging bees. Put the tip of the smoker in the hive entrance and puff a few plumes. That'll cause a slight stir, but they'll soon calm down.

After a moment's wait, lift off the hive's outer cover and blow a little smoke down inside. Then, using your handy hive tool — a little crowbar that's an indispensible beekeeping aid — pry up the corners of the inner cover and lift that off.

There they are, beautiful and busy! Smoke them down in the super a bit, so you can pry out a frame and see what they're up to. To do that, gently pry up the two corners of an end frame with your hive tool and lift it out. Remember to move deliberately and carefully around bees, because quick, jerky movements are apt to excite them. Besides, you don't want to crush any of those winged honey makers.

Frames in upper supers will either be empty or contain honey, visible if uncured, and capped with lovely white beeswax if ready for harvesting. To really learn what's going on in the hive, though, you'll have to go below the honey super and into the brood chamber, where the queen lays her eggs. So, carefully reinsert that top frame you took out (smoking the bees a bit to clear the way). Then pry up the four corners of that super with your hive tool, twist the super a bit to break any remaining bee glue holding the supers together (don't forget the twist, please, unless you want to risk yanking still-stuck-on frames from below), lift the entire super off — it may be heavy — and set it down on your inverted outer cover.

Smoke the brood chamber. (You'll have to develop your own feel for how much smoke to use. The best general rule I've heard is when the bees start poking their heads back out between the frames, it's time to smoke them down again.) Pull out an end frame as you did before, hold it up, and inspect both sides. Then set it down on end, so you'll have more hive room to operate, push the next frame over with your hive tool, pull it out, and hold it up. Before long, if it's laying season and you have a good queen, you should find several frames that are "slam full of brood" . . . filled with large, oval patterns of brown-capped cells. If you've got a number of those larvae-laden frames, as well as some with open cells that — look real closely — contain little white slivers (eggs) in their bottom, you're in business. You've got a good queen who's doing her job. You can reverse your sequence of actions, close up the hive, and go home content.

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