No drones in Olea's

Today I went into Olea's, all the way to bar 7.  Despite the 80+ degrees, it went smoothly without the previous messiness I had encountered.
The number of bees in the colony is subjectively diminished.  There is a 1-2 inch band of honey at the top of bars 12-21, maybe enough for the winter but definitely not enough for a harvest.  There was also a fair amount of unripe honey.
So I wonder, if these bees are finding enough forage to store honey, why am I feeding hives #1-3?  I finished feeding them the last batch of syrup today.  I plan to go into the hives in 3 days to replace the Apiguard, so I will also take a look at their honey stores.  They have received over 50 pounds of sugar.
Back to Olea's-  There was a small patch of capped brood on bar 12 and then brood and young larvae all the way to bar 7, where I stopped the inspection.
I saw no drones and there was no drone brood.  The cells where drone had been raised (the cells are larger),were being filled with unripe honey.
I also saw very little pollen, so before I closed up, I fetched a pollen patty and stuck it in the back below an empty bar.

The bees are buzzing!

There were a couple of projects to do today.  I wanted to put the Apiguard in the hives and take off the extra supers of #1 and 2.  Things went smoothly.  However, when I went to put the supers in the shed, I saw that one had some uncapped honey.  I decided to leave the super out for the bees to eat.

There were bees flying all over the yard, even around the deck by the trellis.  Then I what they were doing.

 

There was still a lot of buzzing in the yard and I saw it was coming from #3.

By the time I finished with these videos (it took quite a while to edit, save and upload), things had quieted down.

A few bees still looking for honey

 

Hive #3's entrance

Today in hive #2

Dinah and I went into #2 this afternoon.
As with #3, there was little honey stored, so I will remove the empty super.  This hive still had a fair number of drones running about, no drone corpses on the bottom and a handful of drone brood. 
We saw an open queen cell in the top brood box.

Even though the focus is bad, you can see this is chewed open at the bottom indicating that a queen has emerged.  You can also see that this is at the bottom of the frame, therefore a swarm cell.  I conclude that this is the hive that swarmed at the end of August.  (By the way, the swarm died in the nuc.)  We looked for the queen but did not find her.  I did see some larvae, and better yet, cells with royal jelly in the bottom.  That means that there have been eggs laid in the past 1-3 days, a very good sign.
I then did an alcohol wash, making quadruply sure that the queen was not on the frame.  The picture below speaks for itself.

Tomorrow I will treat all three hives with Apiguard.

Piles of drones

I went into #3 today, primarily to see if there was enough honey stored for me to be able to take some- there was not.  But here is what I did see.
The top super had no honey nor any new drawn comb.  I will take it off the hive tomorrow; I placed the escape board under it when I reassembled the hive.  The lower super had  both capped and uncapped honey, maybe 2-3 pounds.  Remember, the bees need about 40 pounds to get through the winter.
There was brood in the top brood box and I even saw some eggs.  Of note, there were subjectively a lot fewer drones about and only a small area of drone brood.
I spotted the queen in the bottom brood box.  There was some brood in the bottom but I only looked at about half the frames.
What was especially interesting was what was on the bottom of the hive- piles of dead drones!  (Sorry, I did not have my camera with me this time.)  This is the time of year when the workers start evicting the drones; their work is done for the year and now they will just use up precious resources.  I think the workers stop allowing them to eat, so they starve.  The undertaker bees must be finding it difficult to keep up, hence the piles of corpses.  I expect that if there were not so many yellow jackets scavenging around the apiary that I would see many more drone corpses on the ground.
I am considering the need to feed the bees because of the surprising lack of honey.

It's hot! Lets grow a beard.

The pictures are paired vertically.  Bees do grow beards.

Note protective eave