I decided to head up to the farm today ... in between volleyball matches at a local tournament at State College of Florida. While I was at the farm, I picked up my share of veggies. Adam the farm manager and others stopped my while I was working around the hive.
I only have one hive at the farm, since two others died out from CCD early in the year.
The remaining hive was overgrown with grasses and a large Brazilian Pepper tree and quite shaded. I spent an hour or so carefully cutting the branches so as to not disturb the bees. I also trimmed the grasses around the base of the hive. Hopefully the additional direct morning sunlight will get the bees active earlier and more productive.
A volunteer, Mike came over to observe and lend a hand after I had offered for him to have a look. The 2 top regular supers had drawm comb and a little honey, but not full frames or any capped. The Ross Round super below was also not with much activity since the last visit. Foundation still had yet to have comb drawn. The brood chamber was active and my inspection showed eggs, larvae, and capped brood. I found a few hive beetles, and some ants had nested in the rotting portion of a corner of the brood box ... Several frames contained queen cells which I removed. In the near future I plan to replace the brood box with a new one and exchange the solid bottom board with a screened bottom board.
Adam said the field of clover had just been cut, so the bees had a good amount of flowers with nectar for the past several weeks.
Today we went from spring to summer ... temperatures up near 90 with a return of the humidity so familar during our summer season.
I returned to the volleyball tournament with a large bag of veggies ( zuchinni, yellow squash, sunburst squash, onions, 2 types of lettuce, turnips, carrots, and mustard greens ) and a single bee sting to my left ring finger.
A good day ... happy to see that this hive made it through a particularly difficult winter and will hopefully put on a good amount of honey of the next several months.
