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| Mead in the Making |
On Saturday Aug 21 I opened the hive to see what was going on.
There were not many bees in the top super, and only a couple frames of capped honey.The rest of the frames were largely empty, but there were all drawn out and the extracted frames we put in were all cleaned up and nice looking again. In the top brood box there were a lot of bees and a lot of honey. The middle frames that didnt have complete foundation had a bunch of what looked like drone cells -i opened one up with a corner of the hive tool and saw a fat larva inside. There were quite a few, i just left them because those frames had bigger cells than the other ones and with nothing to replace them (except the one hated black plastic one) destroying them would be pointless. Besides, since the big flow is over and the honey harvested it shouldnt matter too much having a few extra drones (im hoping).
I didnt pull out all the frames, only the middle ones, but i tried to look on the bottoms of all of them for a queen cell or anything unusual but didnt see anything. In the bottom brood box there were a lot of bees, honey, orange capped cells (pollen? brood?) there were a lot of bees covering these frames so i didnt dig into any. Plus it was so hot i was more than ready to get outta that suit.
Otherwise, bee traffic has been good and we have seen them on many many flowers around including mint, geraniums, the green beans, squashes, clover etc. The neighbors report that their garden is being visited in great numbers. All in all, they seem like they are doing well.
