Beecam installation & empty queen cells

Beecam set up, showcasing southeast-facing hive

Tech support and beekeeper extraordinaire, Ted

Despite the turmoil that has been transpiring in the hive this last week, I went ahead with my dream to acquire a beecam to watch the comings and goings of the hive during the week. On work days I leave the house while the bees are hidden inside the hive, and return home when they are again hidden inside the hive. The weekends come and I get to see just how active the colony is during the day. Ted graciously selected an appropriate outdoor worthy-camera, extended our wireless network out into the yard, hooked up the camera, and provided a web location for the live feed to reside for your enjoyment, tedfoss.com. The software that runs the camera requires a log in (mindthebuzz) and password (mindthebuzz1), and then you must click on the tab that says “single” to view the feed. You can change the resolution of the image, as well as several other parameters from the webpage to suit. Please let me know if you have any trouble logging in.

Screenshot from the beecam, showing second broodbox

Development timeline for a worker bee from a fertile egg

Shown is a screenshot of the hive today--what a delight! If you are lucky when tuning in, you may also see birds, bunnies, or beekeepers in the beecam from time to time. We have also decided to rotate the hive 90 degrees to face southeast (the bees clearly seem to prefer this angle, as they were only using the southeast side of the entrance in the previous orientation), which additionally facilitates better viewing with the camera.

I opened up the hive today and was happy to see that the queen cells from last week are now empty, and the hive was bustling. If we are lucky there is one new suitable queen who will be able to mate and start laying eggs ASAP, before the hive population starts to drop. I didn’t see any new eggs yet, but I also didn’t see any evidence of worker bees laying infertile eggs either, which is good. Most of the old brood is hatched, which is to be expected given at least two weeks without a queen (as you can see in the development timeline). There is just a hint of the start of new comb in the second brood box, so perhaps the bees are enjoying the new addition to their home.