May 27th and bees doing well

I've been watching the bees all month and can report that things look pretty normal.

The left hive is loaded with bees and I think I'll be taking off the entrance reducer soon because, with this hot weather, the entrance is pretty crowded.  I think the hive is strong enough to keep out any enemies.  I may wait one more week though.

The right hive is the new one.  It's interesting to see them side by side because the new hive has much fewer bees.  I study it to make sure the bees are bringing in lots of pollen and it seems they are.  I haven't wanted to go back into the hive again after disrupting them a few times a few weeks ago.  But I will go into both hives next week and give them a good inspection:

• clean out any comb that is where it shouldn't be, or in a pattern that's odd like the one I showed on May 7th in this blog
• scrape off propolis that might be causing frames and boxes to fuse together
• check to make sure I see cells filled with larvae since that'll tell me I still had a queen within a few days
• clean out any debris or dead bees if needed

With my new marine battery, I'm not worrying about changing D cell batteries monthly and hoping they don't run out sooner.  I recharged the battery a week ago and it only took 20 minutes to recharge.  fIt had about 3 weeks of use at the time so if I'm carefully to not let any grass or plants touch the wire, I should be ok for at least a few months before needing to recharge.

However, I will be checking it often anyway, to make sure.

Pollen colors

I find it fun to check on the color of the pollen the bees are bringing in.  Over the past few weeks, it's bright orange, lemon yellow and an off-white color.  When I open the hive and look at frames, I expect those are the colors I'll see on the frames too.