7/31/10: Ninth Inspection

Conditions: Sunny, 85F
Present: Just me
Equipment: No changes.
Activities: Smoked hives about 2:30pm. Inspected representative frames.
Observations:
New hive (pictured on the right): Plenty of brood, still a nice laying pattern. Observed young larvae. No new capped honey, still at approximately 5 frames. As there is no nectar flow so they are not building out more comb either. It’s a summer lull. Very calm bees.

Old hive (pictured on the left): I can’t get over how many bees are in this colony. All the boxes are full of bees. Observed young larvae in the lower deep, the lower medium, and the lower of the two honey supers. Just brood and bees everywhere. I put the honey super in which the queen had laid on top so there is now a honey-filled super between the lower medium and the honey super she was laying in (super reversal). Hopefully she was in the lower part of the hive during this process and if she goes up again to lay, will find capped honey in the lower honey super and will turn around and head back down. And hopefully the brood in the top honey super will hatch and the foragers will fill those newly opened cells with nectar. This hive is not out of open cells yet, so no need to super or swap full frames for empties. There are still several frames that were not built out. I estimate 11 frames of capped honey available to harvest, probably 40 pounds!