Hi all, I'm starting this thread fresh, didn't want to continue my Welcome thread for general stuff. In any case, Saturday (June 15) I did my first fairly in depth inspection. I have an 8 frame brooder with a mason jar honey deep above the excluder - more on that later. I had started with a 4 frame nuc and the install went well. I fed with syrup (frame feeder) and pollen patties to get them going. The nuc frame were in good shape anyways but I figured it couldn't hurt. After 4 days they'd finished the syrup mostly off (1/5 left) and must have been a brood hatch cause there were more bees (lots smaller) and good activity. I left the pollen patties in. Forward to Saturday, fired up the smoker and in I went.
Frame 1 (outside left side) still has almost no activity but bees are crawling on it so good sign. Frame 2 has a lot more bees and some draw out. 3-6 are the nuc frames. Outside side of 3 has lots of empty cells that look like maybe they're putting nectar in? Queen is circled in blue on the inside side of frame 4. Frames 4, 5 and 6 have tons of brood. The outside of 6 has a bunch of drones on it too. Inside 7 has honeycomb being drawn but they were building it out unevenly and it looked like it would poke right into frame 6 so I shaved some off. Tasted good. Other side of 7 had bunch of bees on it and 8 had some activity but not much. They had a small bit of white wax going up into the jars as well. But here's the "more" about the jars: This kit is obviously for beginners (which I am) and a neat idea. That said, I've read some posts by folks who've tried it and decided against it. There's some discussion about if the bees don't take to it they can build back down into the hive, run out of room and swarm. I think I'm at the point with a big blackberry flow on that I needed to make a decision on whether I feel comfortable about the setup so what I did was got another 8 frame deep super for honey and I'm going to keep the mason jar super as an extra thing to use afterwards. That way the bees have a "normal" frame to build out for now. I may even build a combination jar/frame honey super to see if that works. Anyways I didn't see any queen cells so I think that's good.
Things I did right:
Didn't roll/kill the queen!
Put some honeycomb on the blank frames to help get them going on them.
Graduated to nitrile gloves from the big leather bee gloves I bought to start.
Modified the screened bottom board to allow the sliding in of a solid bottom board underneath the screen to use as a mite check/cold weather insulator.
Things I can do better:
I've been good with my smoker but the smoke was a bit warm today, I didn't prime it enough after it had burned a while.
Also probably should have trimmed off the top of the excluder where they're building honeycomb on top and maybe trimmed it off of the frames where they're building it down off the bottoms.
Anyhoo, here's the pics.