Sunday, 15 July 2012

First full inspection


Today there were four of us available and the weather was excellent - so we opted to bite the bullet and do a proper full hive inspection. We decided to start with the larger colony (Hive 1).
We could tell almost straight away that something was wrong - the comb had been built onto the gaps between the top bars, which meant we had to cut into the top of the combs to separate them enough. Fortunately there was nothing but fresh syrup stored in these cells.

  

Unfortunately we lost another comb which fell off the bar - but again it was nothing but syrup. The bees seemed to remain very calm throughout which was very positive.  The syrup feeder had not been emptied as much this time, as the weather had been much better recently.

Hive 2 was very worrying - it became immediately obvious that the great mass of comb (which had been completely surrounded by a lump of bees since they were delivered) was completely at an angle to the bars.
 Again we tried to very slowly and gently separate the comb enough to inspect it, but it was no good, the comb just started to collapse and drop to the bottom of the hive.  We decided to call a halt and return with some cord tomorrow to secure the combs back onto the bars.

After getting back home, a closer inspection revealed tiny eggs in the base of some of what we had thought was empty comb.

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