2012-08-11: Dirthed

Orange:  I added the queen excluder to keep the queen out of the honey supers.  Brood darken the cells and its a shame to have to kill any brood that happen to be in the frame when you pull it to extract the honey.  I was in a hurry so I didn't make sure that the queen was not hanging up in the super, but I thought it was probably a safe bet considering the supers were full of honey.

Purple:  Once again there was a significant amount of bearding in Purple.  I cut out the drones from the drone frame.  The hens do so enjoy them.  I pulled a frame from the brood box.  There were lots of empty cells, but many of them had eggs inside so no worries.

Mmmm... brooood...

Bearding from the back gap

Green:  I decided that I wanted to tweak how the supers were set up.  While doing this I noticed that the older super, which had been full of honey, has had the honey removed from the frames in the area closest to the front entrance.  This is a sign that there was a July dirth and the bees had to dip into their honey reserves to get by.  Not surprising considering it had been very dry and not much blooms in July in any case.  I also decided to add an excluder underneath them as I really did not want the queen to start laying eggs in those empty cells.  The medium super, had some frames partially drawn out and ripened honey (rather than only partially evaporated nectar) in place.

Newer medium super being drawn and filled with honey

Shallow super showing where honey was removed

Dark Green/Swarm:  The gals were starting to draw out the frames in the top brood box and add honey.

Blue:  The gals were very active in the top super working to draw out the foundation and add honey.  I need to drop in a few more frames since I didn't have all the frames I needed when I added the super.

Double Nuc:  Yellow was doing more in the top box than Green.  Fed Green.

Red:  Added a second box, but I had only 3 assembled frames (all bare foundation).  I added feeders to help fill the space.  I also fed them to help them draw out the foundation.

Yellow:  I didn't check on Yellow.