Bee Wednesday Ep. 7: Double Queen Cups & Honey Gold!

Welcome back to another installment of Bee Wednesday! If you’ve been following along with my backyard apiary journey, you know that every week brings new surprises, and this week was absolutely no exception. During today’s routine hive inspection, the girls kept me on my toes with some classic colony drama—and a very exciting milestone that made all the hard work worth it.

The Buzzing Sweet Stuff: Our Honey Super is Filling Up!

The biggest highlight of this week’s check was pulling the frames from our honey super. For any beginner beekeeper, there is nothing quite like the feeling of lifting a heavy frame and seeing that beautiful, shimmering, brilliant white capped honey.

The bees have been working overtime drawing out comb, gathering nectar, and curing it into liquid gold. While it isn’t quite time to bring out the extractor and harvest just yet, seeing those filled cells means we are incredibly close. Knowing this specific honey is ours to keep (unlike the honey in the deep frames, which belongs to the bees for the winter) makes it so much sweeter!

Keeping Up with the Drama: The Quest to Raise a New Queen

Bees are naturally determined creatures, and it seems mine are firmly set on expanding their royal family. During the inspection, I discovered two brand-new queen cups built at the bottom of the frames.

If you remember last week, I had to clear out a couple of queen cups then, too. Finding them again means the colony is still actively thinking about swarming or raising a backup monarch. As part of managing the hive and keeping the colony stable, I used my hive tool to gently scrape those cups away. It’s a constant game of backyard stay-or-go, but staying ahead of it is all part of the fun!

A Royal Sighting and Fresh Pollen

Just when I thought I might miss her today, I finally spotted the Queen! She was busy moving across a frame packed beautifully with capped brood and nectar. Even better, the frames are absolutely bursting with bright, vibrant yellow pollen. I even caught a glimpse of a couple of workers arriving home with massive pollen baskets on their hind legs—a great sign that the local forage is rich and the hive is thriving.

This Week’s Wax Wealth

Before closing up, I managed to collect a nice, solid chunk of fresh beeswax from some burr comb. This week’s haul was easily double, if not triple, the size of what I’ve been pulling lately. I’ve been saving up all these clean wax scraps to melt down later for a fun candle-making project.

Overall, it was a wildly successful check. The colony looks strong, healthy, and incredibly productive. Check out the full video below to see the queen in action and get a close-up look at that gorgeous honey!

Happy Bee Keeping!!