I was happy to get the smoker going and have it last until we had finished the 2nd hive this time ... I think I may finally be getting the hang of this. The bees in the 1st hive were active after opening the cover, but not agressive ... we worked quickly but with a sense of calm and the bees seemed to handle our intruding just fine. The top 3 supers were quite heavy and looked to be almost completed filled and capped. The one with 2 plastic frames had a little not finished, but the other 2 (one new and one older) were full as was almost the whole Ross Rounds super ... we estimated about 50 lbs on 2 supers with the other at about 70 lbs. and the Ross Round perhaps 30 lbs. quite a nice supply with about 200 lbs total on this hive. I hope to remove the 70 lb. super and extract honey from those frames and take the 32 rounds of comb honey on the next visit. We did not notice any signs of mites, hive beetles or wax moths ... the bees looks healthy and we did a visual from the top of the Brood chamber and the frames looked active and quite full of brood and larvae. Replaced everything, but changed the over of the supers putting the Ross Rounds one from the top. On to the 2nd hive.
Here the new super was quite full and the 2nd brood box was also full of drawn comb, lots of bees and plenty of activity. We pulled 2 frames in the top brood chamber and saw larvae, eggs and the activity of a healthy Queen. Since we were not looking for the Queen we did not disturb the bottom hive box and reassembled the hive.
I was quite excited about the progress of the bees in almost completing the Ross Rounds and having populated the 2nd hive so well with most of a full super full of honey.
Next month we will finally get to take off the excess honey and enjoy the sweetness of our labor. It was a good visit. After getting out of our bee suits, we roamed the row of eggplant and picked a few select fruits to enjoy as an eggplant parmesan dish over the weekend.
I look forward to the August visit.
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