Thursday, August 16, 2012

August 15 Visit

I looked in on the hives briefly yesterday, the top bar hive still seems to have very few bees in it, while the langstroth hive has very many bees in it and a lot of brood soon to emerge.
There are two supers in place, and both have some nectar stored up but nothing finished, that is to say no capped honey yet. The bottom deep box seemed so full of bees and brood I decided to put on another brood box with two good looking frames of mostly drawn-out comb and the rest clean looking frames with plastic foundation. I have not used the queen excluder because it seemed from last year the bees didn't like to go through it unless there was absolutely no place else to go, so I am hoping the bees will continue using the supers for storage w/o trying to fill up the second deep box.
I only took one picture, I got a glob of wax on the camera and decided I didn't want to wax  the whole thing up. Seems once you get a bit of sticky wax on your hand it goes everywhere yet you can't get rid of it.


I want to remind myself to check back on them next week because we are leaving on a big trip on the 26th.


Thursday, August 2, 2012

August 2

Looked briefly in both hives today. In the Langstroth hive there were lots of bees and plenty of brood. Observed young bees emerging from their cells.

Very few bees in the top bar hive.