Friday, July 28, 2017

July 28 hive inspection - all looks good

4) Let's start with the Nuc...It has only three completed frames but I saw the queen.  Probably because there were so few bees.  But it looks healthy and I see brood in there so I did nothing to the Nuc.  I'll just keep watch.

3) Hive 3 is the new hive, second from the right.  That looks healthy and there was brood, capped and uncapped so I must have a queen in there but I didn't see her.  Because I had some frames that were new and not drawn out with comb, I added a top hive feeder and some 1:1 syrup to give them a boost.

2) Hive 2 appears to be thriving after such a slow start this year.  I removed a bunch of comb, added some syrup to the feeder inside the hive, and also put the super back on the top  in case it's needed.  They aren't really using it yet.

1)  I have a lot of bees in this hive but the second deep seemed rather light on honey stores...but I did move some frames out of this last time so I think it just hasn't had time to recover yet in 10 days, at least half of which were rainy.  So I added the top hive feeder again to hopefully help them build comb on the new frames faster.  I saw progress but this should help.  Then they should be ready for the goldenrod coming very soon.

I'm thankful for my flowers because I think they really help the bees in the slower times.  I did see lots of colored pollen in the hives...yellow, orange and white...

I charged the fence yesterday too so I think the bees should be fine for a week or two.

Lastly, others use tie downs to hold the hives together so I bought some..the kind with a ratchet at the end.  I added one to Hive 1 and Hive 4 and was tired so I stopped.  My fence has a strong charge so I think I'll be ok should a bear decide to break in.  I think (hope) they have learned to stay from this fence.

Soon, I'll pull off the supers from Hive 1.  That's probably the only harvest for this year.

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