We inspected the hives on July 4th and July 20-22nd, unrecalled dates in August, and September 14th
7/4/13
Hive 1:
- queen looked healthy
- many drones
- original frames look very full, but little or no expansion/wax creation on adjacent frames
- no wax yet above queen excluder
- curious removal of plasticell at perimeter (bottom) of new frames
Hive 2:
we had fed hives 2 & 3 "Brood Builder" - they seemed to really enjoy it
- saw queen, looked healthy
- 1/2 new frame had wax buildup
Comparison July 4-20th
7/20 Hive 3 (small hive):
We saw queen:
We had two friends observing, Joanne:
and her daughter, Julia:
We saw activity on one new frame:
On
7/21, we noticed bees in the house and garage, being aggressive. The
problem appeared to come from the fact that we accidentally left the
top-feeder, filled with sugar water, between hives 2 & 3, open,
overnight. Thousands of bees were in the sugar-water, many dead and more
attracted to it. We weren't sure if they were our bees, or others. Hive
2 seemed to be experiencing vigorous robbing behavior. We covered the
entrances to Hives 2 & 3 overnight.
7/22:
Hive 1:
outer 4 frames still not built out:
September 14 Hive 1
July22 Hive 1
July 22
Inner frames:
Hive 2:
Outer frames not much on them:
Inner
small frames we accidentally used are very full. These were the frames
we partially filled with comb from when we captured the bees in the
irrigation box. The bees have fully filled out the frames:
and the bees are forming their own comb below the frames:
We found the queen and she looked healthy and productive:
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