6/29/09: Fifth Inspection

Three weeks since we were last in the hives.

Conditions: Cloudy, threatening rain, 78F
Present: Bud F. and I
Equipment: Added first supers on top of the lower deeps for both hives. Removed tape from additional entrance holes in the deeps. Removed one frame of "old comb" that had lots of drone larvae from the Russian colony.
Activities: Smoked hives about 5:30pm. Inspected all frames.
Observations: Both hives were doing very well.
Italian: Observed lots of comb in the Italian colony, all frames built out except the wall side of one of the wall frames. These bees had built a lot of comb since the last inspection and were running out of room! One supercedure queen cell and 7-8 swarm queen cells noted. These were removed to prevent swarming and the supers were added. Glad we did not delay inspection any further as they could have swarmed, and a swarm this late in the year would be bad news. Hopefully the increased space and loss of the existing queen cells will prevent an Italian swarm. My one concern is that we did not see the queen. If the queen is dead or gone and we destroyed the queen cells designed to replace her, that would be bad. This seems unlikely, though. As the inspection went on, the colony got more and more agitated. A small amount of royal jelly was collected from the torn down queen cups. It tastes sour and buttery. Not all that yummy, really.
Russian: Comparitively less comb than the Italian colony, but still only approximately 1 frame to fill and obviouly still building comb. Lots of textbook brood pattern seen on many of the center frames. Looks like a good queen who had a little bit of a late start, maybe due to her being Russian. The colony was quite docile throughout the inspection. Quite a few drones in this colony, probably due to the old comb, some of which had damage and was previously chewed out and replaced with the larger drone comb cells. One frame had an excessive amount of drone larvae and was removed and replaced with a frame with empty plastic foundation. This will help with mite control if varroa are now present, but mostly it's to keep the drone population down as the queen would just lay more drones in this frame in the future. We'll get a small amount of honey from this, enough for just a taste, before allowing the bees to clean it up a few hundred feet from the hive. Setting it at a distance will allow the bees to remove the honey and nectar via foraging and hopefully prevent any robbing.