I came straight back out with the two supers - it'll only be a quick job to add these empties to the hives, ready for the bees to fill up.
They each contain ten empty frames. The frames are not actually completely 'empty' - they each contain a thin sheet of pure beeswax, embossed with a hexagonal pattern. This gives the bees an accurate guide to work from - they would naturally fill a completely empty box with wax comb themselves but it wouldn't be so perfectly straight like these sheets are, and it would be impossible to lift them out without greatly damaging the comb. Largely destroying the comb used to be the only method of harvesting honey until the modern beehive was invented. This is what led to the belief that beekeepers had to endure thousands of stings to get the honey - nowadays stings are far less common because this system allows us to work with the bees without harming them.
Beatrix first - they'd already stuck the roof down tight in the hour since we opened this hive!
Because this colony already has a full super on top, I split the empty frames up in amongst this one too.
This means that the top two supers here are now both half full, the bottom super is still completely full.
This is the other hive needing a super. It currently has just the brood box.
It needs the metal queen excluder sheet on top of the brood box first. This is covered in holes which are just too small to allow the queen to pass through, but the workers can. Placing this metal sheet here means that the queen cannot get up into the super and lay eggs there.
This should keep them busy for a while now, so we probably won't need to look in this colony for a couple of weeks now.
Beatrix is now just over 1 year old, she was artificially swarmed this year and has a very low mite level..
Charlotte is exactly the same age (hatched on the same day) and the colony is in an almost-identical state to Bea's, though with less honey stores.
.
The swarm nuc came from the new hive and now contains a laying queen, hatched just a few weeks ago. I need to transfer this colony to a new nucleus so that I can return the nuc I borrowed. The queen also needs to be marked and some frames of sealed brood are to be removed. This colony should then be suitable for rehoming elsewhere.
.
The new hive contains the queen I saw hatch before my eyes, just a few weeks ago. She is now mated and laying well. This colony has a higher level of mite drop but we have now just completed the bait comb removal treatment so I expect that to drop significantly now.
N1 has no queen right now, but has queen cells due to hatch out within two days. The bait comb needs to be removed soon to tackle the varroa problem here.
N2 has a laying queen and hopefully the varroa has been greatly reduced here too. Once the queen is marked, this colony should also be suitable for rehoming elsewhere.
