16 July, 2010 - 11 am

It was 85º, partly sunny and slightly windy at the Bee yard.

Swarm hive
The bees are hard at work in the honey super. All frames have about one third comb drawn and there is curing nectar in the cells. I didn't do a hive inspection today, that will be done next Friday.

Beta Hive
The hive had ants crawling all over the top honey supers. I removed the supers and found thousands of ants all throughout the two honey supers. So I did what I could to clean them up, and set them aside. I looked through both hive bodies. I found capped honey and uncapped honey on six of ten frames. The remaining frames had pollen and some capped brood. Both hive bodies were like that, so I removed every other frame and replaced with foundation frames. I am hoping this will bring this hive back. I did find eggs and larva of various stages, but not many due to the lack of laying space. I am hoping that I don't have a laying worker. I put all of the hive bodies back together, and only put one honey super on the hive. There was just not enough bees to deal with the ants.

Alpha Hive
I did not get a chance to look at the hive today. I will look in on them this weekend.


Backyard Bees
I did not inspect them today. I did put a honey super on the hive. This particular super has drawn comb. At this time the backyard bees have two honey supers. They look like they need the room. I will inspect them this weekend.