Nav holding one of the frames while Bryn inspects the hive.

My friend Nav came over this Saturday to meet all 40,000 of our pet bees and to participate in the biweekly hive inspection. After putting on the super fashionable bee hat, she helped Bryn by gently smoking the hive to make the bees go inside and very calmly held onto the frames while Bryn was moved everything around.

Both hives are thriving. Bryn was able to identify new larvae in each of the hives, and found the Hawaiian queen in hive 1. He gently reached into the bees with his bare hands, grabbed the queen, and marked her with a small spot of blue marker (see below). We saw some frames with honey, and others with pollen. A few had mostly babies and had capped honey around the edges. Overall, the bees in both hives are quite docile; even though there are lots of bees in the hives, they don’t make too much of a fuss when the hive is opened and things get moved around.

It was a super-fun morning. Nav was super-calm and thanks to Bryn for showing us the hive and for answering all our questions!

Bryn marking the queen.

The queen is in the centre of the frame (see blue dot).

Bryn showing us a frame that has bee larvae in the centre of the frame and cells of capped honey around the outside of the frame.

This is a picture of Nav smoking. Ha ha. Smoking bees. Ha ha ha. No seriously, Nav is smoking the bees so that they will retreat and let Bryn take out the frames with his bare hands.

Bees patiently waiting on the peas until Bryn and Nav are finished.