The smell of bees and honey

An unexpected benefit of beekeeping is that occasional smell of honey from the hive. A little puff of wind or slight breeze is all it takes and if you're lucky enough to be downwind, you're in for a treat.  They are bringing in the nectar now and filling up comb.

Today I went to a friends who also has a couple beehives.  His wife and him manage the hives together and so I was able to be there when they opened up the hives this weekend.  There was a lot of anticipation because when they split the hives a few weeks ago, the one queen died.  So they had to wait while the bees created a new queen from existing brood.  And they were pleasantly surprised that both boxes had a fresh young queen.  Unfortunately the boxes had way too many hive beetles.  We manually killed at least 20 of them.  Maybe more.

I still need to get the new home ready for the last swarm.  Maybe tomorrow.