Mr. Ellis also helped me with my bees on Monday - just checking everything, what needs to be done before it gets cold and as I said before, it's nice to have someone else look at your hives. Quite a change looking on Monday from the last time I opened the hives.
I had put empty supers on Hive #6, 4 and 1 on August 17th - these supers were empty when we checked Monday - they were all taken off. No wax moths which is just amazing.
Hive #6 had brood in the second super and not much going on in the brood box - they had moved up to work so we switched them around. The top super has honey in it - we removed two supers that were basically empty.
Hive #4 - The top super was empty. We did take the other super and put on Nuc #1 so now Hive #4 has 1 super and a double brood box.
Nuc #1 - I had put a super of honey from the freezer on 9/15/08. They are okay but will need to be checked before frost.
Nuc#2 - Added a full super of honey from Hive #4.
Hive #1 - took off top 2 supers - they were empty.
So I'll check toward the end of the month and see how they're doing. I did see a few hive beetles - not enough to be concerned with. The ants were terrible in Hive #6 and #4 - I'll be putting some used motor oil around the bottom of the hives.
Didn't see drones (those boys are toast right about now) but the bees are bringing in lots of pollen and there was brood in every hive. Seems the bees have used a lot of their stores already so I'll need to check on them again.
I'm not a big fan of feeding hives but you do what you gotta do. Sure don't want them to starve this winter.
