Hannah and Steve visited this evening. The feeder in hive 2 was completely empty with a lot of bees trying to glean the last few drops of sugar syrup from the straw. We had to fill the feeder very slowly with the funnel to avoid drowning bees. The straw above a floating mesh has worked very well to give the bees a means of escape and we didn't lose anyone. We started to look into the hive. The first comb appeared straight, if small. We had to cut some honey containing comb to free the second and by the third decided to stop as the comb was built diagonally across the bars. We adjusted one leg of the hive as it was possibly not level.
We have a dilemma - it is getting late in the year and any damage to the bees in this very small colony could be enough to see them off (again). But if we don't release the combs from the bars, we can't inspect the hive and look for disease, signs of swarming etc. And even if we did manage to get a haphazard colony through the winter, we would want to start again in the spring with straight comb. We resolved to go away and read/ask for advice on the best way forward and closed up the hive. This hive does seem to be making a distinctive buzzing sound, quite different from the other one. I'm concerned it means the bees are not happy - perhaps they don't even have a queen.
Hive 1 also had an empty feeder. Despite the good weather and clearly lots of bee foraging traffic the bees are clearly still relying on our sugar syrup so we need to go back every 48 hours maximum. There was so much bee traffic we opened the third entrance hole.
So off to do some research and back to visit the hives on Saturday.
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