There was good and bad news today. Hive number one is growing the slowest. When I checked the brood chamber I happened to see a varroa mite crawling around on some capped brood. (See picture at left, actual size is about the size of a pinhead.) This could be an infestation and may be the reason that this hive seems to be lagging behind the other two. I still have not put a second honey super on this hive. They even have a few frames in the top honey super that do not have the comb fully drawn out. They are somewhat behind; I may need to look into some varroa mite reduction procedures.
Hive number two had made excellent progress into the second super so they were actually ready for a third honey super. This is the strongest of the three hives. I saw lots of healthy brood so it looks as though its queen right and the honey is flowing in good.
Hive number three is not as strong as hive number two but they were ready for a second honey super. Just like before, when I placed the second honey super on top of hive number three, I also removed the queen excluder. So hive three is doing good with two honey supers and no queen excluder and weighed in at a whopping 182 pounds. This is a total of 37 pounds since three weeks ago when the photos were taken. Adding the second empty super added an additional 10 pounds of wood and wax so the total weight of the hive at this point is 192 pounds. I would like to know what hive number two weighs but I only have one scale. It looks like we will get a few pounds of honey this year especially if this honey flow keeps up.
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