Memorial Day weekend hive inspection - added boxes

Bees are building up nicely. Lots of bees in the boxes. Added a box to each, making 2 medium-frame supers on each hive. After discarding old frames whose wax had become too old and dark, we found ourselves a couple frames short. They'll have to try to do without. Actually we plan to get some more foundation and spare frames soon. We want to have another couple boxes on hand in case we can catch a good honey flow, we don't want to run out of room. Hive one bees are dark and more docile, hive two (on the right) bees are lighter brown. In the past they have gone on alert by the time we finished hive one inspection, so we started with hive two and it went better.

New bees installed

Bought two bee packages from Virginia bee supply, installed 4/23/2016. Set up one hive box for each, installed bottom boards, entrance reducers, and boardman feeders. Put the rest of the corn syrup from the package feeders into the boardmans. Checked Monday 4/25, found queens were released. Starting to fill stores from boardman - clear liquid in some cells. Did not see queens, which are unmarked. bought sugar and refilled boardmans. Here we go again, best of luck to our new girls.

Beeswax in metalworking and haymaking

Neat article from Grit magazine. I'm finding lots of interesting bee articles on this keepingbackyardbees.com site. Beeswax is used to prevent rust and blacken steel, rubbing it on heated pieces so it melts into the grain of the steel and prevents rust from starting. A mixture of beeswax, linseed oil and mineral spirits becomes a paste to rub on rusty and not-yet-rusty tools. And it can be used to lubricate the blades on your sickle bar for your haying work. http://keepingbackyardbees.com/using-beeswax-for-metal-work/