Bees: May 2021 Inspection

Before the inspection, comparisons between the 2 hives: one is much more busy than the other.

Problem hive left, good hive right

Opening the problem hive (left), and looking at the feeder. It is empty, which is great. It took 2 weeks to the problem hive to empty its feeder, while the good hives goes through the same quantity of syrup (8 quarts) in 1 week.

The feeder is empty.

Continuing with the problem hive. The feeder is removed, exposing the top deep box. Very few bees, and very little cell building in the frames of that deep.

View of the top supper, once the feeder is removed.
Activity on a typical frame of the top supper.

We now remove the top box deep (very little going on there), and look at the deep box below. Much more bees and activity going on, this is the brood nest. That bottom deep box is about 90% full.

Bottom supper of the problem hive
A frame full of syrup.
The only eggs/uncapped larva I could find.

Whereas on the good hive eggs and larva are everywhere, I found only one spot in the entire problem hive with eggs and uncapped larva. The picture shows the is extent of it.

Empty frame.

Then I found 2 or 3 frames where the cells are empty: no nectar, no syrup, no larvas, no cap, few bees on them. The good hive, in comparison has none of those deserted frames.

Detail of an empty frame.

Those empty frames where one of the elements which started to have me worried.

Frame with brood

Then about 3 frames with caped brood, which looked OK.

The corner of some of the frames looks dark: honey!

A few frames had dark looking cell caps in the corner: honey.

Queen

Then I found the queen on one of the side frame. She has the torax marking, so this is the original queen that came with the nuc I got mid April. The queen was doing fine. Then I put the hive back together, wiped and refilled the feeder with syrup, and inspected the tray under the hive. I found about 6 or 7 hive beetles there, which I removed. There was no hive beetle in the good hive’s tray.

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