Now that the bees have built right across the brood box it's becoming quite cramped in there, and also they are having to store all their honey reserves in cells which the queen needs to lay eggs in.
We added a second box to the hive this morning. It's not as deep as the brood box and is known as a 'super' {from the Latin, meaning 'above'}. These shallower frames are used only for storing food, not eggs, so it's going to be much easier for us to judge exactly what supplies they have in stock.
We put a queen excluder between the brood box and the super. This is a large metal sheet with holes all over it. These holes are precisely large enough for the worker bees to pass through but too narrow for the queen. This has to be in place before supers are placed on otherwise she'd get up there and lay eggs in there too!(These photos are clearly bee-less. I've had to use photos from a while back when I was originally building the hive - the bees seemed a bit agitated today so we didn't hang about taking photographs).
I've also removed the rapid-feeder for now. Once they've moved their supplies upstairs we'll be able to judge how large their honey reserves are.
