We started with the east hive, new this year. Their drone comb was fully-drawn and capped, mostly brood. We gave them the frozen/thawed wooden frame, which has drone foundation, interestingly partly worker-cell drawn--that must have been a challenge! They had two honey supers, and we found the top (first given) super moderately heavy; the bottom super, light. So we put the hive back unchanged.
The west hive, last year's swarmed hive, must contain 100,000 bees. They had three honey supers, two very heavy, and the third moderately heavy. Their drone comb was raised, but empty at first glance--i.e. not capped, which seems odd. Perhaps that queen has stopped laying drones. Perhaps drone brood is within but not ready for capping. (We will look into the cells at leisure.) Has she swarmed? If so, she left behind an enormous population. We will check the brood chambers for eggs when we go back on 6th August. We replaced the frame with the frozen/thawed green-plastic drone-frame won at our bee seminar. We then gave them an empty honey super, and replaced their three supers in order: that hive now has four honey supers.
Our next date to go into the hives and exchange drone comb is 24 days from now, or Friday, 6 August. Tammy, who is interested in keeping bees, would like to help extract, around Labour Day.
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