Subject: The hive ain't empty...

From: [email-masked] (Mark Sandrock)
Date: 5 Aug 94 20:05:12 GMT

Since I stirred things up a bit with my questions about empty hives
and robber bees, I thought it might be good to let people know what
I've found since then.

Today at lunchtime I opened the hive and found a lot of bees crawling
about. They were especially dense on the sunnier side of the hive as
opposed to the shady side. I could see that they were busy adding comb
on three frames closest to the side. In fact, these frames looked so
thick with comb that I did not initially try to move them, but instead
removed one of the middle frames. It had some honey cells along the
top, which I remembered from before, but in the center there appeared
to be brood cells on which the covering was broken. I don't know if
this is a normal appearance for hatched out cells, so this concerned
me somewhat.

The bees seemed quite calm and gentle. A dozen or two were floating
around the hive, a few seemed to check me out, but they mostly seemed to
ignore me--a rather gratifying attitude to my way of thinking. :-)

I could easily see dozens of bees crawling around on the frames, and
one thing that puzzled me a bit was they mostly seemed to ignore the
smoke I would puff at them occasionally. Still, it felt reassuring to
have the smoker handy.

I'm going out of town this weekend, but next week I intend to look at
a few more frames and try to spot the queen and/or active brood cells.

Anyway, my newbie impression is that a colony has indeed moved in,
but perhaps someone would care to interpret what I've seen so far.

Thanks again to everyone for the helpful comments.

Mark Sandrock
-- 
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	"Fruechte reifen durch die Sonne,
Chemical Sciences Computer Center	 Menschen durch die Liebe."
505 S. Mathews Ave., Urbana, IL 61801			--Julius Langbehn
Email: [email-masked]