Conditions: Sunny, 72F
Present: Mohammad and I
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Took a good look at each hive to see what they’ve done.
Observations: Spotted both queens who are alive and well. The Italian hive is quite vigorous during nice days, lots of flying. The Italians have lots of capped brood, a few honey cells with gleaming white caps and several frames with new comb on both sides. We saw baby bees, and watched one emerge! Bee birth! There are at least 4 frames that are still bare (no comb) and there is plenty of room in the hive for more bees without supering yet. The pollen patty was nearly consumed. The Russian hive is doing fair. The Russians have new comb on the one side of plastic foundation for the two frames facing the old comb, but no more. They seem to be slow to take to drawing out comb on the plastic foundations. They were almost out of sugar syrup. The pollen patty was maybe 25% consumed. There was capped brood, though less so and the pattern was not as consistently centered with food surrounding it. Baby bees were present, though. We did not spot any eggs, but they may have been there in the new comb. It was difficult to see with the light yellow background and the lighter colored new wax. There was a lot of waxy dark crud on the bottom board on the side of the hive with the entrance blocked by the reducer. I’m concerned about this as the Italians are keeping a very clean hive. I’m hoping they’ll clean this out when the entrance reducer is removed and the exit is more convenient. There were bees gathered on this material. It almost looked as though they had produced wax, but instead of fixing it to the foundation, it had sloughed off and fallen into the grit/gunk they cleaned out of the old comb. I’ll ask Bud about this when he gets back in town.
