The weather was very nice when we arrived and I put my frames around back on the porch where they would be easy to get when I started to work with the hives. I then went off to have lunch since it looked like a thunderstorm was getting ready to roll through. And sure enough one did! Not only was there thunder and lightning with heavy rain, but marble sized hail unloaded from the sky. Hail was sluicing off of the porch roof forming not-so-little piles on the lawn below.
After the storm had passed and time enough for the bees to start foraging again, I started to assemble my gear. I was very surprised to find that several of the frames I had left on the back porch under cover of the porch roof had in fact been peppered by hail and one in particular had big holes punched through it. I suppose hail damaged wax foundation can now be added to the long list of things that can go wrong while beekeeping! I decided it was probably fine to use as the bees would likely build comb across the gaps and since it was meant for brood boxes and would not have to go through an extractor like a honey super comb would it could get by with a little loss in structural integrity.
You can see the white hail in the grass.
I opened up Artemis and pulled out the drone comb I had placed in 10 days earlier. It was only halfway drawn out. So it will be a while yet before I will need to pull it to remove capped drones. I went ahead and transferred the frames in the bottom deep box (which was yellow) into a green box, taking the opportunity to clean up the frames a bit. They did not appear to be overly full of honey or brood. Also, I did not see any sign of swarm cells. So, cross fingers, they will not feel overly crowded going into swarming season, especially since I then reversed the boxes.
I then gave Artemis a sugar dusting before closing it up.
I then opened up the top of Juno and added the new deep box. Juno was did not have much bee activity as I was doing this. I think they probably did not need the extra box on top, but had the box and I do worry about getting caught up with other duties and being prevented from checking on the hives for an extended period. But the weakness of this hive makes me want to give it a proper inspection next time I am at the bee yard. I want to make sure that there are brood as proof that the queen is alive and kicking, and to see just how much progress they have made on the original 6 frames added to their box when I installed the nuc.
Both my mother and I agreed that the hives look very prim and proper not that they are properly color coded again. Another session with the weed whacker will likely improve the looks of the yard even more. Perhaps we will serve tea down there soon... maybe even scones!
Since then, I did a mite count on some of the drones from the frame I had removed on the 7th. I pulled 20 drones from their cells and three of them had mites. While to get a good proper count I really need to do 100 drones, this suggests that I have a moderate infestation at the moment. The sugar dusting should probably be done as often as possible and drone frames should also be used aggressively. This Fall I will certainly have to treat them.
I found this online tool useful:
https://secure.fera.defra.gov.uk/beebase/public/BeeDiseases/varroaCalculator.cfm
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