Another grand pre-dawn adventure takes us back to our friend Roy Arnold to select and bring home a new hive of honeybees. This brings our total to three hives, the first two thriving beyond our imagination. The new queen is Tutwo (short for Tallulah Two) and we intend that she continues to fall right into place with Suiko and Olive Isabella voracious foraging and building.

Joshua and Andrea return from their five-hour trip and suit up to move our new deep up beside Suiko.  Andrea’s suit is WAY TOO LONG so fashion adjustments are needed.

Joshua heads up towards our bee area with our new ‘deep’ and the first order of business is to get our platform stabilized and level.

The platform wasn’t cooperating quite as we had hoped and the box we are hefting weighs in at about 50 pounds. The girls are still safely enclosed and want out. 

Although this is a vigorous hive with a strong queen, Roy admonished us to feed immediately, heavily, and continuously so the girls have time to build up their winter storages and wouldn’t you know we are short on sugar water so. . .

We open the sliding entrance doors and my goodness is everyone ready for a breath of fresh air!

We learn tons every time we see Roy and based on a tip from him, we opened Suiko’s hive just to insert the feeders and, sure enough, the girls had already built a bunch of combs FILLED WITH HONEY on the lid so this week we shall suit up again and remove that comb, add another shallow box for continued building.

The next step in our bee adventures is to move Olive Isabella’s crowd into their new insulated digs so stand by for that wild ride. . .deep breaths for Andrea and Joshua and blessings to all our Beebabies.