June 6, 2009 - 11:30am

At the Bee yard...temps were in the high 80's to low 90's, there were no breezes and the skies were clear.

A friend and fellow beekeeper of mine, Gene, accompanied me to the bee yard today.


Alpha Hive

Activity at the hive entrance was very high. There were a lot of bees flying around the front of the hive. The bees are bringing in pollen.

This hive has had a honey super installed for some time. Checked on it today and found that all ten frames have drawn capped comb!! Since its so full and nearly complete I installed another honey super. This newly added honey super has the plasticell foundation and no drawn comb.

Once again I did not get into the hive bodies to do any inspections, I hope I don't regret this.


Beta Hive

There were a lot of bees coming and going at the entrance. But there were not many bees flying around the front area.

This have has had a honey super on it for some time. Checked this honey super to see what was happening. There were some bees in it but no clustering of bees, no comb building...nothing. So I removed the super. Now that the honey super was removed the top hive body was visible and accessible. The top hive body looked very packed with bees and drawn capped honey cells. Gene had some ideas about what to do with this hive. One of the ideas was to swap the top hive body with the bottom hive body, and maybe that would get this hive going. So we did that. We started looking through the newly repositioned bottom hive body and found the queen on the second frame. Several of the frames in this hive body had a lot of capped drone cells. Hopefully I don't have a laying worker, or a poor quality queen. I'll check again next weekend and see how things go.