The Striped Hive

The bees are doing very well for themselves this year. I checked on them today and found they were still reading brood in the super. There were a handful of swarmcells on one frame in the top deep, but I squished them. There were only a few unoccupied frames between the two deeps (though there were about 5 unused frames in the super) so I decided to add another deep box. I wanted to split the hive, but there weren’t many fresh eggs to pull out. All of the usable space in the colony was going towards honey and pollen storage, save a few frames on the edges. I found the queen and saw she was a little smaller than a queen that’s laying full tilt.

Drones are everywhere in this hive, and I pulled a frame of drone brood to put in the freezer. I saw 3 mites on bees while I was working, and I plan on treating them next month. Despite how sunny it was today and yesterday, it’s still too cold for mite treatments. There’s also a ridiculous amount of pollen in there too. Every frame I saw had pollen stuffed in it. I rearranged the frames so there are more empty frames available to the queen, and I’m hoping this increases egg laying. I want to split this colony this year so I’m hoping she fills in a couple of new frames by the next time I check on them!

as the hive stands now, there’s a green deep on bottom, a white deep in the middle, a green deep on top, and a white super above that. it certainly makes the garden more interesting, haha