It is not very professional, but since I got an iPhone 4 the other day, I figured I might as well take some video of the hive before I opened it and got the girls all worked up. Be sure to listen for the chickens in the background at the end.
If you recall from last week, I decided to add the top hive feeder back onto the hive to hopefully supply the necessary artificial nectar flow to encourage the colony to build out more comb in the empty 3rd super. When I removed the inner cover, the girls had totally used every last drop of the syrup.
However, after performing my hive inspection, it appeared they used most of the syrup to fill out the comb in the 4th and 5th honey supers on the frames I had previously harvested honey from and added back to the hive. It did appear that some work had gone on building out comb in the 3rd super, but not really enough to use for brood. This was not what I wanted to see.
Of course I didn’t have the foresight to bring out more syrup because I really thought one batch would do the job. Now it looks like I’ll be making up another gallon to add back on tomorrow which will hopefully do the job.
Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas 