Observation Hive

I set up this observation hive in my garage (my wife wouldn’t hear of keeping it in the house). It worked out pretty well since the garage was basically my workshop…we rarely parked cars there. Anyhow, I added a new NWC queen and a few frames of russian brood and I was in business.

It looks pretty sparse and it was at first but it pretty quickly took off and did ok. On hot days, the bees would congolomerate around the door. I am not sure exacly why that happened as I always kept a thermometer near the hive to watch the temp.

I suppose it must have gotten hot in the hive from their own heat they made. It would have been difficult to manage the heat with only one entry point. Anyhow, they never seemed to care too much and did fine.