June 4, 2010 - 1:30 pm

It was 88º, cloudy and no breeze at the backyard hive.

Backyard Bees
Today was the day for the second inspection. The hive top feeder was just about empty. While inspecting the feeder I found numerous hive beetle larva!. I removed that feeder and replaced it with a clean feeder. Although I found larva in the hive top feeder I did not see any beetles in the hive, but they are there somewhere. I will be spraying the area under and around the hive stand to deal with the beetles and ants later today.

I removed the #2 frame and it had one side drawn out and filled with pollen and curing sugar/nectar. The other side was about half drawn out, and there were eggs. The #1 frame which is against the wall was untouched. The #3 frame was drawn out on both sides, there were eggs,larva and capped brood! Frames 4,5,6 were the same as 3 but with more capped brood. The bees are storing plenty of sugar/nectar and pollen throughout the frames. The bees cover 5 frames at this time. There are many many bees producing wax. There is so much wax being made that it is easily visible on the ground under the screened bottom board. So at this point, it has taken the bees two weeks to draw out five frames.