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December 6, 2018 Hive Inspection: One Colony Down
Well, I started inspections with the Persister Hive because we've been worried about it. It hasn't had much activity at the entrance for a couple of months, but there are always a couple bees going in and out. I think this is the one that swarmed a few months ago, landing up high in the sea grape tree where I couldn't get them, and the population never rebounded. When I looked at it today, there is some honey storage in the brood chamber and workers in it, but signs of wax moths in about half of the frames in the deep, no brood or larvae, and no queen I could locate. Only saw one small hive beetle. I'm not sure, but the Mother Hive might be using it for honey storage at this point. Would a neighboring hive utilize it? Might ask around on that. I cut out the old comb with wax moth damage and saw a few wax moth larvae. Put the frames back in for now, but need to look at it again soon. Since I'm working on a removal from an avocado tree a few miles away, I could move them in if this colony absconded or got robbed out while weakened.
The Mother Hive is a whole different story. There has been plenty of activity at the entrance, so we haven't been concerned about what's going on. The super was absolutely full of capped honey. Every frame. I set it aside, and took a look in the deep. There is plenty of open and capped brood, pollen and some honey in the deep, so that colony is rocking. Scraped down 8 frames to harvest and got them back in the super and the colony closed up just fine.
Harvesting 8 full frames by crush and strain took a few hours, but we got about 2 gallons of dark, tasty honey just in time for the holidays. We can give the gifts of the bees this year! We ran through the rest of the lovely hexagonal jars that
rubibees got, as well as most of our miscellaneous ball jars! They have our "Temple Bee Honey, Casa Raven" labels on them, so we'll take some to the Turning the Tides festival this weekend, too.
The Mother Hive is a whole different story. There has been plenty of activity at the entrance, so we haven't been concerned about what's going on. The super was absolutely full of capped honey. Every frame. I set it aside, and took a look in the deep. There is plenty of open and capped brood, pollen and some honey in the deep, so that colony is rocking. Scraped down 8 frames to harvest and got them back in the super and the colony closed up just fine.
Harvesting 8 full frames by crush and strain took a few hours, but we got about 2 gallons of dark, tasty honey just in time for the holidays. We can give the gifts of the bees this year! We ran through the rest of the lovely hexagonal jars that
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