Since trying to clean up the cross combing in #3 at the end of May I have had a bunch of sticky comb sitting in a large pot. Before I could process it in the solar melter, I had to get all the sticky off, so I put the pot in the yard for the bees to clean, which they did in two days. Here they are, hard at work.
I had removed the drone frame from #2 last week. After leaving the frame in the freezer over night, I put it out to be cleaned by the birds and the bees. The jays really like to eat the pupae and the bees remove all the sticky
Hive #1 looks like it is failing. I inspected two days ago (yes, it was a couple of days earlier than initially planned). There only capped drone cells and no queen seen. I'm afraid there may be a laying worker. However, hope springs eternal- I saw one capped queen cell. Once again, time will tell. I did put the entrance reducer in because the colony is not very strong.
#2 still looks strong. I found the queen on the drone frame in the upper brood box. There was a lot of capped brood in the bottom box. There were a lot of drones running around. Oddly, there was brood on the frame facing the edge of the hive.
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| Visible foundation is on frame behind |
#3 has nothing new in the super. The girls are making honey in the irregular comb on the foundationless frames in the top brood box. There was a lot of drone brood on one of the foundationless frames in the top brood box. I tried using my new scratcher to remove the pupae. It is not as easy to do as I had been led to believe from reading internet postings. Mostly I just squished comb and brood. I did manage to extract a score or so of pupae and saw one mite.
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