Check-up

Full team checked on bees yesterday, 31 July.

Red hive, bees are flying, and if there is a new queen recently bred, she has not yet begun to lay in a mid-frame of her top brood box. We checked one frame which had an empty half-circle of brood comb, and lots of pristine honey capped above the brood sphere. We checked the single honey-super, and this contained no bees above the queen-excluder, and they've raised some comb in the mid-frames, and stored little honey, nothing capped.

Yellow hive, crowd of bees evaporating on the landing-lip, top (first given) honey super is capped and full, and could be taken off; other three supers are in as-anticipated stages of completion, with last-given super comb raised and lots of room. We have one additional honey super available, but it doesn't look as though they will need it before the honey supers are taken off at the end of August. The two photos are both from the yellow hive, and both demonstrate, to my chagrin, how not to hold a frame! (I should be holding the frames by the ends: the camera cannot lie!) The left-hand photo shows a frame from the second-given super, which is honey-filled and in process of capping; the right-hand photo shows an outermost frame from the same super, which has raised comb and honey filled but not capped on the outer side.