Beehive inspection and mite treatments

Yesterday we did a beehive inspection and mite treatment.

But before that, I assembled a honey extractor that we’ve had for several months, since we still have some honey from last year that we haven’t gotten around to extracting yet. Unfortunately the handle was broken. It’s still possible to use it, though we might see if we can get a replacement:

Honey extractor

On to the inspection. Here’s the Yellow hive, with some drone cells:

Yellow hive: drone cells

A brood frame:

Yellow hive: brood frame

A honey frame:

Yellow hive: honey frame

We removed the top feeder, and added a Flow honey super, since they were getting a little full:

Yellow hive: added honey super

For the Turquoise hive, there were plenty of bees, but didn’t see any brood. So it’s possible those bees are just robbing. This hive probably won’t make it:

Turquoise hive: bees but no brood

The Cedar hive was doing well… a little too well, building brood between the boxes, resulting in broken brood cells when separating them:

Cedar hive: broken brood cells

They also built some honey cells above the top box, into the gap below the top feeder:

Cedar hive: honey cells above the box

A brood and honey frame:

Cedar hive: brood frame

Another brood frame:

Cedar hive: brood frame

We added mite treatment strips to the Yellow and Cedar hives:

Cedar hive: mite treatments

A look at the current state of our three beehives; Flow supers on the Cedar and Yellow:

Beehives

The Cedar hive (you can also see lots of cell building on the bottom of the top feeder, left out there for them to evacuate and salvage any honey):

Cedar hive

The Turquoise hive, that probably won’t be long for this world:

Turquoise hive

The Yellow hive, also with a Flow super:

Yellow hive

About an hour later, while I was mowing the lawns, I noticed a bunch of bearding on the Cedar and Turquoise hives:

Bearding bees

On the Cedar makes sense, as the treatment strips are pretty nasty smelling, so they might want to air out the place. Not sure why on the Turquoise, as it didn’t have treatments:

Bearding bees