Not much change

I like looking into the hives.  I no longer smoke the bees and they don't get riled up as I look around.  The smell of the wax and honey is invigorating, too.   Since it was warm today and it's been 8 days since my last inspection, I donned my bee suit and took a look.
The population of neither hive seems to have increased.  The amount of brood was about the same, too.  However, I didn't go into the bottom box of the new hive.  There was a fair amount of pollen in both hives.  The girls in the old hive seem to be eating the stored honey.

 

I recall that this frame was full of honey on last inspection.  

I think I'll leave the bees alone for a couple of weeks now.

Bees feeding and comb being drawn

Two days ago, as you recall, I removed the feeder from the old hive.  Here is a photo of the bees still in the feeder looking for sugar syrup.

At the the same time, there was one bee drinking in the new hive.  Today I watched at least three bees go into the feeder at a time;  here are two filling up.  The feeder looks cleaner because it is.  This morning I cleaned both feeders and filtered the syrup (you can see debris in the picture) before putting the feeder back.  I watched them for a few minutes.  When a new bee flew/crawled into the feeder, it would take a while to find the sugar water.  She would walk around the top edge and on the cup tasting the surface with her tongue.  Sometimes one would go back into the hive without finding the syrup.

Single bee feeding yesterday

Two bees drinking today

I looked at the trays below the screened bottom.  Besides the usual debris there was a fair amount of wax flakes.  That means the bees have to be making wax and are presumably drawing new comb.

Wax flakes on tray top below screened bottom

Even though the populations are small, they seem healthy.  I expect they'll grow, but unless they grow remarkably,  I'll go ahead with the (ordered) nucs.

Warm enough to look

The weather has warmed up today; it's about 70 in the yard and above 60 at the hives.  Time to take a look into the hives.

For the past 4 weeks or so, the top feeders have been in place.  The girls hadn't been taking any syrup until this past week; for the past few days, at least in the old hive, they're slurping it down.  There they drank all the syrup, I refilled it two days ago and today it was empty again.  In the new hive, they are not going to the feeder.  I assume it's because of the empty deep box in the middle of the hive.  Today there was one bee in the chamber, not feeding.  There were no bees in the medium super.  I took off the medium super even though there were a few cells with capped honey and some more with nectar.  Now I have three medium supers with lots of drawn comb in the shed ready for later this year for the bees to fill with honey. Since there was so much honey in the old hive, at least 6 frames full, I've decided to stop feeding them.  The full feeder is still in the new hive, now with only two deep boxes.
There was brood in both hives.  In the new hive, there were two frames with brood on both sides, medium size areas.  I also saw the queen in the new hive.  In the old hive, there was a smaller amount of brood.  I couldn't find the queen in the old hive.  I did see larvae of all ages in both hives.  There was also a good amount of pollen in both hives.  Most was yellowish and white but there was one that was a deep red/orange.
The drone frame in the new hive was now empty.  I move it into the upper brood box, replacing it with an combless frame.  I put a drone frame into the upper brood box of the old hive as well.  I took out one of the frames on the end and shifted the frames with honey over so the drone frame could go in the fourth spot.

The upper brood box of the new hive.

While I was inspecting the new hive, a bumble bee came flying over and into the hive where it began eating some honey.  I tried to get a picture, but before I could, the bees had chased it off.

An update regarding dead bees with pollen.  Jeremy Rose said that the pollen in the photo is eucalyptus and that the most likely explanation for the dead bees is the cold weather.

New year's inspection and poisonous pollen

Even though it wasn't quite 60 degrees today, I decided to take a look into the hives and see what was going on.  I have noted a lot of activity at the doors over the past couple of weeks.  Last week I ordered a package for Olea's hive and 2 nucs for the Langstroths.  Mike Pohl sort of talked me into getting nucs rather than just queens.  Since there is a considerable difference in price, I wanted to see if the population was growing fast enough to obviate the need for the boost that a nuc would give.
In the super of the old hive, there were two frames with some capped honey but no bees.  In the top brood box there were many frames of capped honey.  In the bottom brood box, I saw only a few (about 20) capped brood cells, no larvae and I didn't see the queen.  Since there was plenty of honey in the deep boxes, I removed the super.  We will harvest the honey with the smash-and-drain method.  Now the old hive is only two deep boxes; I left the feeder in with 2:1 syrup.  (The feeders have been in both hives for a couple of weeks.  I have only seen one individual bee in the feeder once in either hive.)
In the top super of the new hive there was a group of bees between two frames.  There was nectar present of those frames as well as a couple of others.  The top brood box continues to be empty of bees and comb.  In the bottom box, I spotted the queen.  There were pupae and capped brood cells.  There wasn't much honey in the new hive, but it looks like they're making honey from forage or from the feeder.  I did not change the configuration of the new hive and left the feeder.
The population of both hives was small.  I'll check again, of course, and if by February it seems to be growing adequately, I will change my order to queens alone.

Dying bee with pollen

A couple of days ago I saw a bunch of dead and dying bees in front of the old hive.  What was notable was that they all had pollen on their legs; the amount of pollen varied.  What happened?  I was wondering if the pollen itself could be toxic.  First step of research was going online.  Searching for "dead bees bearing pollen" gave hits involving beekeeping forums.  1 2 3  From these I gathered that the general opinion was due to cold and fatigue.  I searched for toxic pollen and found some references.  One plant that produces toxic pollen is California buckeye, but I don't think it is in bloom now.  So I emailed Professor Mussen at UC Davis.  To summarize his long response, there is a systemic neonicotinoid, imidacloprid, that is used to control a eucalyptus pest.  This chemical will slowly, over time, build up to toxic levels in the nectar.  The bees will return to the hive but not get inside and stumble around on the ground, as if drunk.  This sounds like what my bees were doing.  I later thought I could collect a couple and send the pollen somewhere to be identified to see if it was eucalyptus.  Today, when I went to do so, there were no bees to collect.

Phorid flies hatched

Today I saw two flies in the container of bees that I collected from the ground on November 8, 2012.

You can easily see the light color and not so easily the veins on the wings.  The flies I had found amongst the dead bees in Olea's hive were larger and darker; they did have the distinct wing veins.  Perhaps I should capture one and send it off to an entomologist.