We thought we found evidence of a nasty beastie in the hive today, shown in this picture:
That straight line of empty cells in the middle looks suspiciously like the damage some nasty tunnelling grub (a wax moth larva) would cause. These pests are everywhere that honeybees exist but shouldn't normally be a problem right in the middle of a strong colony during their busiest season - the army of house bees here would normally turf any unwelcome visitors out straight away. This level of damage would be a sign that the colony is not able to keep up its housekeeping duties.We found the exact same pattern on the next frame too and it was soon clear that it was actually nothing to worry about at all - it's just the foundation wire being not quite bedded properly in the wax. It can be seen protruding slightly at the bottom of the cells here:
It means the queen had a look inside and decided it wasn't suitable to lay an egg in - big relief!We've still not spotted any drones yet but there must be a few around. We keep seeing a few drone cells about - this is a row of them all stuck on the bottom row of a frame:
There was yet more propolis all over everything today. We had a good attmpt at scraping as much gunk off as possible but I'm pretty sure we'll find it all back again next time!
