Both Hives have a lot of mold/mildew on the exterior areas. I will have to clean that up next visit
Alpha Hive
There was a lot of noise and activity at the hive. There were 70 or so bees hanging out on front of bee entrance and landing area. There were many bees coming and going and it was easy to see how much pollen they were bringing in. I think most of the noise was coming from the gathering cluster of bees at the bottom of the screened bottom board. This is the same type of activity that the Beta hive was doing shortly before they swarmed.
I opened up the honey super and there were a lot of bees in there. They have spread out to cover eight of ten frames. They are still largely clustered in the five middle frames working on them.
I did not go through those frames or the rest of the hive because of the rainy weather.
This is a photo of the bees in the top honey super( so far only one is installed...)
This is another photo like the one above...
These girls were clustered to this rock I used to cover the feeder jar hole
This is what the Alpha hive looks like most of the day
Another Alpha Hive pic...
Beta Hive
The activity outside the hive seems to be picking up. The bees seem to be foraging more lately.
The solar ventilator that I installed was removed today. Its not square enough to fit well enough on the hive for the bees to propolize against the elements.
I saw that there were a lot of bees in the top hive body but none in the honey super. The bees are closing off sections of the queen excluder with wax and propolis. So I went ahead and removed the queen excluder to see if that is what is stopping them from moving into the honey super.
If the weather is suitable this week I would like to inspect both hives.
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