A couple of days ago we did a beehive inspection. Jenn was rewarded with a couple of stings through her glove, though fortunately she appears to have only got a little of the venom before dislodging the stingers, since they didn’t swell up too badly.
Cedar hive: we checked on the Flow super; it is fairly empty, so we didn’t harvest it. We’ll do one harvest when we remove it next month:
Cedar honey and brood frame:
Cedar honey and brood frame:
Cedar brood frame; adequate capacity:
Cedar brood frame:
Hot pink hive: a very nice honey frame:
Hot pink brood frame; look closely towards the top in the middle, you can see a baby bee emerging from a cell:
Hot pink brood frame:
Orange frame:
Purple honey frame:
Turquoise hive: a nice honey frame:
Turquoise brood frame:
Yellow honey and brood frame; the yellow Flow super also didn’t have much honey, so again we’ll harvest when removing it later:
Here are all hives; the pink and turquoise hives were looking a little near capacity, so we added a Ross round super to the pink one, and regular honey super to the turquoise one; they probably won’t have time to do much with those, but that should relieve any pressure to swarm:
The left three hives; the orange hive is still looking weak, so we’re continuing to feed it. They better get a move on if they want to survive the winter:
The right three hives, all with honey supers. We still need to add a proper base on the turquoise hive; we got one, but they sent the wrong size (10 instead of 8 frame), so we’ll have to get another one sometime. The temporary base is fine for now, though:
The grass was getting rather long around the hives, so after the inspection I mowed while wearing my bee suit, and used shears to cut the grass under the hive stands:
