I did a quick inspection of the hives today to see what I might need to do. I am going to the mountains where a friend has empty supers from when he was a beekeeper and he has offered to give me some. I needed to see how full my current supers are.
I opened both hives to find that each hive has full supers of honey that is capped and ready to take from the hive. Bermuda has three supers full of capped honey. I moved the empty super from Bermuda to a lower place in the hive - this is the fourth shallow super and it had honey in it as well but wasn't being worked on as eagerly as the other ones.
Destin had two supers full of capped honey. The bees are working hard on the third super which is just above the medium brood chamber.
I will definitely need to get some of his supers when I see him next.
The most interesting thing I saw were dead hive beetles. I saw a few live ones - not at many as the last time I opened the hives, but then I found the same thing in each hive. In one of the honey supers I pried the frames up one at a time to look at them. As I lifted one of the frames I saw seven small hive beetles propolized at the end of the frame between the frame and the shelf that holds it. Amazingly when I opened the other hive, I found pretty much the same thing - four or five small hive beetles propolized at the end of one of the frames. I'm sad I didn't have my camera with me.
Hooray for my girls - they are protecting their hive, stores and brood quite well.
I've seen my bees do the same thing. When I open them up after 2 weeks or so, they have usually trapped at least 3 beetles in propolis between the top bar and the cover. It's really intresting to see the bees do the same thing in an observation hive. I used to have one a few years ago. I watched one beetle get encased in a prison of propolis, chew through it and solicit for food from the honeybees...which actually FED it!
ReplyDelete