Week 7: Going with the Flow

We are officially in the middle of the spring nectar flow, which means the bees are packing away all the sugary goodness they can find -- mostly from black locust, honey locust, black walnut, and black cherry at my house the moment.

The nectar flow triggers the bees to multiply rapidly. Between future bees and future honey, I am continually adding boxes and frames the apiary. The frames simulate the way bees naturally build honeycomb but hurry the process along a bit by giving them something to build on.

The process can take a few weeks as teams of young bees generate small amounts of wax from plates on their abdomens and build the honeycomb up bit by bit. What starts out looks like something from Tron eventually becomes storage for nectar, pollen and baby bees. (The rice-looking things are eggs.)