Thursday, January 17, 2013

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.

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