6/30 Hive inspection notes

Thanks to Tropical Storm Debby and some other factors I've been overdue on my inspections.  Today I did my Gville hives and here's a quick summary:

Pink hive - rich in food stores, queenless!, lots of beetles

Pink only has a handful of capped brood left and a handful of what appear to be emerged queen cells.  Plan for next time - transplant a from of brood from the hill hive.  Also, they weren't drawing at all in the honey super I'd given them so I pulled it - I think the extra space was just giving the SHB room to do their thing.

Hill hive - not so rich in food stores, very queen right, fair number of SHB

The plan on this hive is to feed a bit and let them get their food stores up so they can support the brood they're rearing.

Also, though overdue (and therefore likely less effective) I finally watered in my SHB nematoads.  Hopefully they'll help, but I'm afraid I sat on them too long.  So I'll probably order some more in the near future.

Photos from 6/6 hive inspection

Thanks to my dear friend Martin and his trusty camera I'm able to share a very nice collection of photos from my 6/6 hive inspection.

6/6 Hive inspection photos

Thanks Martin!

6/6 Gainesville Inspection

Checked hill hive for expansion into medium super.  They've drawn comb and there are eggs and larvae on the medium frames.  However, there is still lots of room for them to expand.  I'll feed them a couple times over the next week or so to help them pull the rest of those frames and get some food stores going into summer.

The pink hive is active in the honey super, but they haven't drawn much comb up there.  Also they continue to draw burr comb under the queen excluder.  It's becoming increasingly clear that the honey super went on too late in the season and that they're not inclined to put a lot of work into that 2nd medium.  I'll leave it on until at least one more inspection at which point I may pull the honey super off and get it stored.  Also, in this hive I checked the deep frames where I'd seem possible swarm cells going in over a week ago.  None of these appear to be used and remain open.  Will continue to monitor for indications of swarming.  Lastly, there were a moderate to low number of beetles in this hive, so I added back a beetle blaster with some oil.  Hopefully that'll help the bees keep the beetles under control.

6/5 Interlachen inspection

Inspected both Interlachen hives with John.  Both hives have expanded nicely into their medium supers with visible eggs and larvae on medium frames.  We didn't find the queen in either hive, but lots of signs that both are queen right.

The hive that we've noticed tends towards being a bit more defensive presented no real problem.  Though as the weather began to darken during the hive inspection they became restless and displayed more defensiveness.  At this point their temperament doesn't indicate requeening.