29 January 2:30 pm - 2011

It was 67º at the Bee Yard. Clear skies and no wind.

Swarm Hive - Opened it up and found an empty hive. It was pretty clean considering it was a dead hive. The robber bees did a good job of cleaning out most of the honey and food stores. Took the hive apart stored for later use!

Alpha Hive - The bees have not consumed very much of the feed. Went ahead and removed the top cover and the honey super. The honey super had small amounts of capped honey scattered throughout eight frames. But there were not many bees in the super. Removed the honey super until springtime. The frames with honey will be fed to one of the other hives. Looked through the top hive body and found that 7 of the frames have capped honey and uncapped honey. I didn't go through the frames of the bottom hive body. I noticed as soon as I removed the top hive body that the cluster was about the size of 4-5 frames in the bottom hive body. I put the hive body back in place and left the hive with just the two hive bodies and the inner cover and telescoping outer cover. I will not be feeding this hive sugar water since it looks like they have so much food stored in the top hive body.

Beta Hive - The bees consumed all of the feed! And they were pouring out of the feeder hole. This hive still has a honey super on it and the bees may have consumed the stores, I don't know yet. I also did not inspect this hive at all due to the number of bees and their agitation with me.

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Back Yard Bees

The honey super that I removed from the Alpha hive is sitting on a table near the hive so they can use it.