A Weak Hive

On Sunday, Doug Shaw helped me pull a top feeder off of the hive I have in Clarence Brown's yard. This is the same hive I fed just a week or so ago. We were both impressed that this is a weak hive. I have fed them twice and they have capped honey. But there are still empty frames in the super. I'm not sure if I didn't feed them enough, but it is probably too late to feed them again.

However, the real weakness is that there aren't as many bees as I would expect to see in a strong hive and they are way too docile. This hive always has other critters inside -- earwigs, spiders, cockroaches, small hive beetles.

It will be interesting to see if they survive the winter. I hope they do, of course. In the spring I will need to take an extra good look to see if they have a productive queen and if they have some undetected infestation of mites. (I haven't seen any evidence of mites yet, but given the variety of other bugs, I can't rule that out.)