Inspection with Lois

I took my sister along for the inspection today. It was her first time with bees and she was thrilled. It was another successful inspection: the main objective being to check honey stores. I'm very happy with how the bees are doing, like this . . .

General comment: sunny, 22 degrees, bees out flying well. There's a real warm-snap / "indian summer" at the moment - beautiful, and it's definitely been good for the bees. But...hhmm...this site really is too shady even on a sunny day! The ivy is well in bloom and there is lots on site (picture is a week or so old - flowers are actually more out now). Having said that I only saw a few bees on ivy.

Removed varroa floors to give better ventilation. Hive1 floor had fair accumulation of dead mites again. Eeeek. But the Apiguard treatment is over now, so that's that.

Hive1
Stores 5.5 super frames, 5 brood frames ~= 41.5 lb. A bit more than last time - great!
Saw few capped brood, more uncapped brood, quite a bit more pollen than I had seen before. Saw a tiny number of eggs, did not look too hard. Did not see queen. Bees calm.

Hive2
Stores 0.5 super frames, 5.5 brood frames ~= 29 lb. A lot more than last time - phew - looking much better now.
Saw fair bit of capped brood, some uncapped (some very young). Did not see any eggs, but did not look too closely. Capped brood still in middle of frames, but seemed less than before. Did not see queen.
Did I notice the smell of wee from the hive? - supposedly the ivy honey has this smell and I like to think that was it.

I'm very happy with stores in both hives. I saw lots more pollen stored in the frames than I have on previous inspections - they are stocking up for winter. I also saw lots of returning foragers with bright orange pollen on their legs. I don't want to feed them yet since I want them to work hard on foraging ivy. I aim to feed them in the next week, and at the same time swap the positions of brood and super in each hive to put the latter on the bottom. This way, as they reduce their population and their usage of the hive in winter they will retreat into the upper brood box and leave the super nice and clear. In theory. A quick quote re Autumn feeding from "Bees at the Bottom of the Garden" by Alan Campion: "In Britain the suggested time [to feed] is the last half of September, with the proviso that feeding should be finished by the first week in October. There is good reason for this: if bees are fed sugar syrup later in the year they will have insufficient time to evaporate the excess water, and the syrup will be stored uncapped and could ferment, causing digestive troubles to the bees in the depth of winter." There you have it!