Sunday, August 9, 2015
hive inspection
hive inspection. hive 1 only. Too late in the day, getting late in the season. Magic bees teleported inside my head veil and I got stung twice on the earlobe. A bee buzzing directly into my ear canal, I shouted 'take the frame! take the frame!' and pushed a few thousand bees into my wife's hands as I ran off. The hive is solid honey store in that box 3, still no drawout in box 4 - added them too late in the season, no doubt. Box 1 and 2 have brood, pollen, and beebread but don't seem to have much honey in them. Several frames are completely empty. One evening last week we observed a crazy huge number of bees in the air outside the hive and concluded that it was not a swarm, because they did not go fill the entire front yard, but orientation flights for a crazy huge number of young bees.
We opened this hive after 6pm, no worker flights observed so I'm sure everyone was home and having dinner when we stopped by. After taking boxes off so we could start at the bottom, we inspected 3 or 4 frames per box. Nothing in the way of beetles or other hangers-on observed. Not a lot of time to inspect bees on frames for varroa etc. Only a very modest amount of burr comb in the brood chamber; lots of bees hanging about in that empty 4th box and in the large top shim area. Did not see queen cells.
Strange that neither hive seems to use the top entrances, seeming to prefer the bottom exclusively.
Did not get into hive 2.
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