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:

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

A brood frame:

A honey frame:

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

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:

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

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

A brood and honey frame:

Another brood frame:

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

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

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):

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

The Yellow hive, also with a Flow super:

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

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: