Notice the Queen of this hive... she is easy to find by her larger size.  She is even easier to find when she is marked with a colored dot that Jeff placed on her back.

The Marking process

Getting ready to release the queen after marking.  Notice how the attendant bees flock to the queen.

Here we have Jeff and Dee (our youngest daughter when she was 11) preparing for an inspection of our hives. Dee smokes the bees while Jeff begins opening the hive. The smoke distracts the bees and makes them easier to deal with.

Jeff begins thoroughly checking each frame for eggs, brood and signs of any diseases or mites. Regular inspections for signs of parasites or disease is key to running a clean and healthy apiary.

The process continues, frame by frame and hive by hive until all hives have been thoroughly checked.

Here's a close up of just one of many frames. As you can see, frame spacing was somewhat off and the bees decided to do a little filling, resulting in the rising comb at the bottom of the frame known as burr comb.

Still working the hives.

A close up of some of our 2002 bees.

And another close up.

Drones and workers on a fresh foundation. You can tell the drone by its fatter body size and large eyes. Drones are the male bees whose sole job is to impregnate a virgin Queen during a mating flight. The smaller female worker bees will spend their entire short lives bound to caring for the Queen and her brood and basically running the entire hive on a daily basis.

Close up of a Drone.  Drones do not have stingers!

Frame close up. Notice the pollen and honey in some of the cells. You can also see the Queen in the center marked with her color coded button.

A frame of honey

Pollen is used to feed the brood (baby bees).  If you look close in the cells to the right of the pollen you will see eggs and newly hatched larva.  One egg per cell.

Older larva that is healthy will be a nice "milky" white in color

A frame of capped brood.  The Larva will go through a metamorphous stage as a pupa and emerge as an adult bee, much like a caterpillar into a butterfly

Here we see where the bees have created a Queen cell. This tells us one of a few things... possibly the hives numbers have increased to the point they wish to swarm. They would be raising a new Queen to take over this hive as the old one would leave with the swarm. Or, it could be that the workers know the present Queen is straining and getting old. If they feel she is no longer able to perform her duties of laying eggs to maintain the hives numbers, they will rear a new Queen to take over for the present one. This process is known as Supersedure. Once the new Queen is born, she will attempt to and most likely succeed in killing the old Queen.

This nice little worker is bringing home pollen for the hive to process. Bees carry pollen on their legs and you can see this worker is good at gathering the necessities she needs to do her part in maintaining the hive.

A very nice close up of a typical worker bee.

Some times Jeff gets stung...OUCH!

Frames get a lot of use and need repaired

Tools of the trade, smoker in the foreground, hive tool behind the smoker.

Jeff proudly poses with the two "nukes" he made to start off new hives in. "Nuke" is a short name for a Nucleus Hive. These are primarily used when splitting hives to prevent swarming.

A close up of the "nukes". Notice the entrance reducer in place. This allows the new, weak colony some protection from robbers as they have less of an entrance to defend and can focus on building their new home rather than defending it.

Here at Exton Apiary, we believe that there is one thing as good as or better than passing on great product and that's passing on education, as well. The two photos (above and below) are NOT bees. These are German Yellowjackets. Yellowjackets are commonly mistaken for honey bees, but they are not even members of the bee genus. Yellowjackets are social wasps living in colonies and are sometimes carnivorous, having been known to attempt to carry off pieces of fish or liver that are too heavy for them. They also love the extremely sweet smell of rotting fruit and open cans of soda. For more information on Yellowjackets, click HERE.