These days, we need muscles to lift the yellow-hive's capped honey-filled super, which weighs 40 lbs (30 lbs of honey), so the Young Beekeeper's dad came along, and suited up. Here, at about 7:30 a.m. on a cool, fresh, cloudy morning (from left to right): the YB, me, the YB's dad, the YB's cousin (gray sweatshirt), and, foreground, the YB's younger brother.
This hive had fully-raised comb in all frames on the last-given super. So, we gave this hive a new, empty honey-super above the queen-excluder, and put the other three supers back in order. NB: This hive had a varroa mite count (24 hrs) of 30 on the sticky-board, so I will give them a sticky-board next Sunday, so we will get another 24-hour count on Monday morning, our next check-up day. At the end of July, depending on the varroa level, we must make a decision of whether to remove the honey supers and treat for varroa, or let them go through August.
In this photo, the YB's dad is putting the fully-capped honey-super back onto the yellow hive. The supers go back in the order in which they were given: most recent directly above the brood boxes, etc.
Next, we opened the red (swarmed) hive, and they have done almost nothing in their honey super above the queen excluder. (It's advised that new beekeepers keep two hives, in order to
compare, and we certainly have the two extremes to compare!) We pulled out two frames from their top brood box; we saw no eggs in the empty brood cells, there was a bit of honey in the bottom of these. Evidently, the new queen, if we're right she was bred on Sunday, has not yet (Tuesday) begun to lay.
Below, the YB's younger brother sitting on his chair, the rest of us are inside stripping off our bee-garb; see ya next week, bees!
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