We went out early this morning for our inspection because of the brutal heat. No way we want to be out there when the temp is pushing the upper 90s! Bee suits are hot, hot, hot! We were back in the house by 9:00 a.m. but both of us were sweating profusely and ready for a cool shower. Whew!
Our main objective was to see if we have queens, feed, and insert some hive beetle traps.
Twelve days ago we added a frame of brood from Charlie to the Bianca colony, our middle hive. We were hoping that they already had a virgin queen who wasn't laying yet. Today, we saw no evidence of a queen, but we haven't given up hope. Anya, the colony closest to the road has a laying queen -- great news. We will likely be going into the winter with two healthy, queen right hives. Charlie is also queen right and has lots of capped brood! So things are looking at a sort of B+ rating.
The swiffer sheets we put in last inspection did catch some small hive beetles in all three hives, mostly in Charlie which had about a dozen. We will try that again next inspection. For this one I was cleaning up in the office and found some hive beetle traps, Better Beetle Blaster. You fill the well half way with oil and the beetles are supposed to get in and drown. The slots on top are too small for the bees so no danger to them.
I think we used them once in the past and the results weren't great, but I decided to try them again since I have half a dozen. So we gave one to each hive in the top box between the frames. We'll be doing another inspection in a few weeks so we'll see how we did.
We also fed all three hives today, but I didn't have much sugar so they each only got about a quart. The summer has been so dry that it really affects the nectar flow. There isn't much out there right now so starting to feed is a good strategy. We'll probably add another bag of sugar syrup next week, but won't bother the girls except to open the box and add the food.
We took only one more frame of honey which gives us about 14 so we should get about 40 pounds of liquid gold when we harvest. We'll leave the rest of the stores for winter feeding.
One dumb thing...I wore my crocks since my sneakers were down in the basement and I didn't want to go down. Stupid mistake. I got stung on my foot below the ankle bone. Didn't get much reaction which is great. Maybe these little stings through my gloves and my sock are acting like vaccines to desensitize me to the bee venom. That's a happy thought.
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