We did a beehive inspection today.

Smoker:

The yellow hive is still looking great, with lots of honey stored for the winter:

The Flow hive is also doing well, with a decent amount of stored honey:

I mentioned in my previous bee blog post that we were concerned about the purple hive; that it seemed like it had collapsed.

Well, that’s been confirmed. There were no bees, and all the frames had been robbed, i.e. all the honey scavenged by other bees and wasps, leaving just empty wax cells:

We removed the two dead hives:

Disappointing, especially since the purple hive was doing so well earlier.

We’ll replace the frames and get a couple more nucs to replace the bees next year, and try again.