Saw the Queen today

This morning I doned the Homer suit and paid the hive a visit. After exchanging emails with NJEB over the past 10 days, I decided to start feeding the bees again. Last week I placed the top feeder on the stack, and all of the syrup was gone. Although the bees have eight deep frames of honey, I dont want to under feed the bees. Since I am not bottling the honey, I really dont mind if they taker any of the sugar water and store it on the frames - just want the hive to survive through the winter. In addition to feeding them for the winter, the sugar syrup will help them produce wax for the new brood frames that I added.

I did pull two of the honey frames, as I was curious if the bees had started eating their surplus. I saw no indication that anything had been eaten, looks like they are still storing food. I am certain that whn you check the honey stores, it causes the bees to become aggressive. The hive became very aggressive when I was checking honey stores.

Brood Chambers - The brood chambers look good. I saw indications that the bees had started to repair the comb on the new frames that I added last week. The frames had old comb on them, put in several areas, the comb was either damaged or had been scraped away. While checking the upper brood chamber, I did see the queen. This was the first time that I have seen the queen. I was especially impressed with myself,as I was trying to find the queen and was able to locate her.

Overall everything was good today - saw the queen, saw stored food, and I didnt get stung. As NJEB can attest, getting stung really takes some enjoyment out of being a beekeepr.