Well, the bad news today is that our Bianca hive is finished. We reduced it to two boxes since there are still bees in it, but we aren't sure whether they are robbers. We took out two frames with a little capped honey which would have been capped before we added the sugar syrup last Saturday.
The irony of losing Bianca is she was the nucleus hive we paid $170 for in the Spring. It was a really strong hive, but it swarmed. We kept introducing eggs, but Bianca never reared a new queen. The hive that did rear a queen was the split we made from our own hive. So we will be going into the winter with two good hives, Anya and Charlie, and hopefully we can keep them alive until next Spring when we will try again to increase our little apiary. We fed Anya and Charlie with full Ziploc bags of syrup. The bees are also using the water source I left out there which was good to see, and our hive beetle traps have caught quite a few small hive beetles.
The most exciting part of today's inspection was that we saw the queen in Anya. She's a beauty and laying well. It's always fun to see the queen and we don't very often so that was a thrill. We didn't inspect Charlie since that hive has been thriving all summer. We just added the syrup and closed up.
We'll probably feed again in a few weeks.
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