April 24, 2009 - 4 pm

Went out to the Bee Yard, it was 85º, clear skies, very little wind.

Alpha Hive

Looked busy, a lot of bees coming and going. Since it has a honey super I removed the top cover to see what was being done in it. So far nothing is being stored in the honey super!

I removed the honey super to take a look inside the top hive body. The cluster is about 7 frames wide in the top hive body. Where ever there is drawn comb, there is honey/pollen being stored. I found the queen after pulling the third frame! So I put that frame in and pulled a couple of frames out that were no where near her. There were young larva and capped brood on those frames. Didn't see any hive beetles or other pests. Put all the frames back and put the excluder and honey super back on top.

Beta Hive

Didn't seem as busy as it usually does...

It has a honey super so I removed the top cover to peek inside. The girls are not doing anything in the honey super. I removed the honey super and excluder to look inside the hive but I didn't move any frames. There seemed to be so many bees packed in the frames. I left them as is and put all the stuff back in order. Tomorrow I think I will take a closer look and inspect frames in the hive.

Last week there were a lot of busy gathering outside and underneath the hive. This week there were only 20 or so gathered under the bottom board. I did find that there was two inch diameter chunk of comb that the bees had drawn out on the bottom outside of the bottom board where so many had gathered last week. I scraped it off and found that it was loaded with curing nectar! I am hoping that all those bees were not part of a swarm and that they went inside to start working.