Wednesday, June 21, 2017

SR Hive Check 6/20/17

Despite it being extremely hot out at 100-degrees, I wanted to check in on the bees because we couldn't find the queen last time, and I was going to be out of town for a while. So Tristan and I wandered to the back-40 at around 6:00pm and looked in on them. It was getting a little overcast at that point. Well, the shade back there must have been working because, while it was still warm, it wasn't intolerable and the bees weren't bearding.

Because we wanted to work fast and just get things done so we could get back into our boxers instead of wearing long pants, Tristan and I forewent the smoker and just opened up the hive. They were actually pretty tame until the last few minutes.

The top box they have actually done a bit more expanding, but haven't really been filling the comb. And it was strange -- I'll probably get onto the NMBKS list and ask about it -- because the comb was empty, but the sides were a brownish color. I was wondering if they were just starting to fill it with pollen, but I was mostly concerned about disease or something.

In any event, the bottom box was full! They have used all the available space and almost every frame was full of comb that was being utilized. I mean, the end-frames were half-full with comb and underutilized, but I expected that.

First of all, we found the queen! We also found evidence that she's going; capped brood, less drones, lots of larvae. I think they've finally hit their stride! We made sure she was inside the box and moved on, looking at the rest of their frames.

We also saw lots of honey. They have one full frame of honey, and lots of honey at the top of their other brood frames.

In order to encourage them to expand, we took two of the full frames of brood and put them into the center of the top brooder box and added empty frames at the ends of the bottom box. I'm hoping that encourages them to move up and find that they can expand even more, so that later this summer we can start placing honey supers.

In any event, a successful trip to the hives! They're happy and industrious, and they are doing well!

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