, I thought it best to put a medium super on a couple weeks ago where the girls will be able store more honey.
This past Sunday included a very productive, albeit longer hive inspection. The bottom two deeps in the hive have a significant amount of brood in them! The third deep box contains a good amount of capped honey and even a little bit of brood (see below). I was surprised by the amount of cleaning needed of all the burr comb in between the frames considering that I've kept on top of housekeeping items during previous, briefer hive inspections. The burr comb seems to contribute to the drone brood in my hive quite a bit, so I'm glad I was able to clean it out!
It seems like a honey flow is finally here in Marin County! I know that San Francisco has been experiencing a good honey flow for a while, but my colony seems to have just really started filling up their honey stores in the third deep box. Thanks to my paranoia re: swarms This past Sunday included a very productive, albeit longer hive inspection. The bottom two deeps in the hive have a significant amount of brood in them! The third deep box contains a good amount of capped honey and even a little bit of brood (see below). I was surprised by the amount of cleaning needed of all the burr comb in between the frames considering that I've kept on top of housekeeping items during previous, briefer hive inspections. The burr comb seems to contribute to the drone brood in my hive quite a bit, so I'm glad I was able to clean it out!
I was easily seeing three drones per side of each frame and drone comb generally seems to persist on the bottom of wax foundation frames. l decided to move frames with a lot of drone comb a little farther toward the outside of the hive bodies and switch them with some less utilized frames with drawn comb, so that as brood hatch, brood comb will hopefully be used instead for pollen storage. It was discouraging to find that some of the burr comb with drone pupae had mites in it.
I spotted the queen on a frame that had limited laying space in the second deep box and after looking at the photograph I've taken below, she has slightly tattered wing tips. Her laying pattern remains tight on all the central frames, so regardless of this, I vote that she's still a suitable queen.
More to come soon on the highly hyped $4.5M HoneyFlow system.