9/15 - Always playing catch-up with the blog

Again I've missed a couple posts, so I'll try to dump what I can recall and then I'll cover today's G'ville hive inspections in a separate post.

Back on 8/17 I made a trip up to Dadant in High Springs to pick up some equipment and supplies.  Also I wanted to ask advice on a problem that's been developing w/ one of John's hives out in Interlachen.  He's got a hive that seems to have a small colony living UNDER the screen bottom board of the larger hive.  This hasn't been a big deal, but they've begun pulling comb down there, so we need to intervene.

8/18, I did a quick inspection of my pink hive - this is the one with the newly minted queen.  This hive had good brood pattern (better than two weeks prior) and still lots of capped honey.  My impression is that they were making a come back.  Still a fair number of beetles.  So I introduced a couple new beetle traps with some rotten old banana to see if that will help attract the beetles.

8/19, went to Interlachen.  John and I swapped the screen bottom board out of the white hive with the population setting up under the screen.  This allowed up to flip the affected sbb on its side and cut off the comb.  Don't see any signs of a queen down there, so its unlikely they have a queen.  We kept as many of the bottom-side bees as possible and got them into a medium on a new bottom board.  We gave them some empty frames, and cut out some foundation from the middle two frames and grafted in their comb from under the old hive.  We also gave them one medium brood frame from his pastel hive, thinking this would give them a chance to rear a queen if they care to.  Then John put some feed on this hive to see if we could get them to set up shop...  within a few days it was clear that they had abandoned their new home in favor of, surprise, the bottom board of his white hive.  *sigh*

Aside from the failed transplant of the under-hive bees, the two hives seem to be doing well.  We spotted both queens and I was generally please with the condition of both hives.  The pastel hive seemed a little light on overall population, but there was some nice brood so hopefully they're on the mend.  Otherwise, both hives were depleted of any capped honey, so John is going to go back to feeding them.

8/25, did a full inspection of my hill hive.  It's doing very well - tons of bees, plenty of good brood and eggs, plenty of capped food and pollen.  Also they're actively pulling comb in the honey super I gave them.