For the past 5 weeks, Siri has recorded my bee notes for me. A good idea in theory, BUT I’m going to switch to an old-fashioned paper and pen notebook. Aside from my cell phone getting streaked with bee’s wax, its hard for me to translate what Siri records. Here’s my best translation from yesterday’s hive check:

I’m checking my beehives. It’s early Monday morning, Memorial day. An over overcast morning and the smells are so amazing. The smell of flowers is heavy in the air (and burgers??). I’m going to check the beehives.

White hive: The top box has 3 1/2 frames build out it looks like they’re all food frames. The bottom box has 3 1/2 frames of food. There are five full frames of brood. I can see eggs and larvae of all stages. I was getting afraid that it had so much food that there would be no brood. I did not see a queen – this hive has a marked queen so I should have seen her, but did not. Certainly plenty of evidence she is here and active. There are a lot of ants on top of the inner cover. I swept them out.

Green hive has the equivalent of two frames of food in the top box. The bottom box has equivalent of two frames of food, two empty frames and the rest brood. I can see eggs and all stages of brood, but again I did not find a queen.

Flowers blooming today are honeysuckle, ajuga and wild phlox. The temperature is about 60-80F.

Most of these notes, I could translate or revise to make sense, but Siri can’t distinguish when I say “food’ and “brood”. Well, she just doesn’t know the word “brood” I think, and she will substitute random things. Sorry Siri.

Here’s a comparison of my two hives five weeks after installing them. (Both had a second box added 2.5 weeks ago and their frame feeders removed the following week, so they each have 20 frames total now.):