Tuesday July 26, 2011

All three hives are going strong.
Hive one has some comb to build in both honey supers so the yield from this hive may be low.
Hive two is still going great and they have made good progress on the comb building and they have brought in a lot of nectar.
We dug down into the bottom honey super just to check things out and I came across some bad comb just above the top brood super. There was a big hole in the wax in one of the frames, some sidewise comb on a few of the frames and a few drone eggs were deposited on the bottom of a few of the frames. I am not sure why the bees do this occasionally but when this happens it is sometimes hard to fit the frames into the extractor and if the wax breaks while spinning it’s a mess. I moved this box to the top of the hive and I will go in later this week and replace those frames with ones with better comb.
One of the frames with the weird comb had a pure wax foundation (no plastic) so this can be cut up and put in boxes for people who like honey in the comb. Or I can throw it the melter (along with the capping) at the end of the season and use it for canning or cooking.
Hive 3 weighed in at 250 Lbs! which is 34 lbs. of nectar/pollen in nine days! It looked healthy and they had produced a fair amount of wax and nectar in the new super from last week.