After pouring down rain all day Friday and early Saturday morning, the weather finally cleared. With a threat of thunderstorms on Sunday, I figured I should take advantage of the break in the weather to perform the inspection.
The girls were exceptionally non-agressive this morning except for the one below. You can also see me installing the Beetle Blaster (click the link for the best jingle ever) between two frames that will hopefully catch any pesky small hive beetles lurking about. I did not see any evidence of them on the frames which is awesome and hopefully it will remain that way.
I also finally have a good shot of Large Marge. She’s the larger bee with the green dot on her back for easy identification. The dot colors are actually standardized by the year the queen was hatched so it easy to tell how old your queen really is.
I also added a 3rd super to the hive. I did find one swarm cell in the 2nd super so I decided it was probably a good idea to add the 3rd even though I would have rather seen a bit more comb drawn out on the frames. However, I would say a good 5 out of the 8 frames were drawn out, so adding an extra super is not causing me a lot of heartburn. Next week I’ll check the progress on the frames in this super since they all have new plastic foundation. I may have to put the feeder back on to give them an extra boost of wax production.
Urban Beekeeping in Austin, Texas 