News of the L Hive

I've decided to name this hive the L Hive since L is the first initial of the woman's name from whom Julia and I got these bees. Over the weekend I opened the L hive to see what's what. In the bottom deep, I found frames that were coming apart and rotting on the ends. But all the frames in the deep bottom were filled with brood.

This is a vigorous and hard-working queen.



The brood extended almost to the edges on each frame. They didn't have much honey storage on the brood frames. Maybe since they have lived in a deep and a shallow for four years, they have learned to maximize the frame for brood production.




I decided that these girls needed a new area to build in and to lay brood in so I added an empty box this weekend. I filled it with mostly empty frames with a tiny ridge of comb on the top. There were a couple of frames with old comb on them to help guide the bees.

The L hive needs some attention. The bottom box has rotten corners, the box has no slatted rack and the bottom board needs replacing, I'm going to get boxes ready and move these bees into an 8 frame deep and two medium deeps on Thursday if all goes well. I will again adapt a 10 frame bottom board for an 8 frame hive and transfer these beautiful brood frames to a new box. The frames that are broken, I may try to glue, but I may leave until they actually fall apart and then replace them.

See the beard? We've had a hot weekend and the bees look like summer bearding. I will also put a slatted rack on this hive on Thursday to help with ventilation.