Visiting Bees

Doug Shaw and I made the rounds to our hives today. He has 5 active hives; I have 3. My best guess is that the hive at Clarence Brown's never swarmed, so I will be left with 3 for the year. As long as they have sufficient strength, I am happy.

At this time of year, the nectar flow is diminishing, so a primary task was to inspect hives to see how much honey was going to be available for extraction. Of my hives, I have two that may have a modest amount available. The one at Clarence's has less honey than I thought it might have. I have two supers dedicated to honey storage. One will be harvested. (The honey wasn't capped yet.)

The blue hive in my yard also has a super that is partly full. This hive has a brood box that is totally full of honey. I had placed it above the brood box where the queen was released, hoping that they would build out brood comb for her to lay eggs. My hopes were in vain. She just moved up to the honey-bound box. Doug and I switched this arrangement around. The empty, yet to be built out deep is now above the honey-bound deep.

The yellow hive is doing well for what it is. The queen is active laying eggs. This hive has one super that has only been minimally drawn out, but the bees have stored honey along the outer edges of the brood frames.

Both of the hives in my yard need more workers, but they were not as destitute as I had feared, so there is some relief there. If they continue on, they will not need to be combined.