Bzzzzz. Yes, at last another bee update!

Lovely bees.

Slightly misbehaved bees, actually. They swarmed again a few weeks ago. So I am informed by my parents, who tried to follow them. I sincerely hope that somebody got the swarm who will appreciate it; I've been told by some to requeen every year and by some to do it every two, and frankly, I wanted to keep the lady they reared when they swarmed last summer. (I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if I just got very reproductively enthusiastic bees. I'd just installed them from package last summer, as some of you may recall; the post-swarm queen was larger and more productive, however, so I wasn't complaining.) I'd actually just cycled some edge-frames they weren't using into the middle and they'd only just started using the super I gave them when I put the Apistan strips in (that super is theirs forever now, pretty much, but that's just as well since they seem to be using both brood chambers for, well, brood...), so I'm a bit surprised they decided they were too crowded... but ah well. The hive is well populated and still seems relatively docile so far. (I'll check again in... one to three weeks, depending on my state before and after the upcoming lab trip.)

So I took the mite strips out, since today was the six week mark and I wanted to put on a new super. Which I did. I only put nine frames in, however, because when I tried to pry out one of the frames in the existing super to look at it... the cappings stuck to the next one over and it oozed. Just into the hive, however, so I figure they can clean it up. Since I only have the one I'm not really worried about robbing.

In other news, I got my headlight bulb replaced. Not sure when it went out. Good thing, too, since I ran into some stripy rain on the way home.