July 3

Bee report for July 3.

The blue hive has so many bees. They have no place to sit on the comb and they are hanging out in the “lounge” - the space between the division board and the hive wall. They were bearding this morning when it was still cool. A few emergency Queen cells are there, but no full queen cells. Red dot queen is visible. plenty of brood, but very little honey. I gave them empty frames left and right, and a frame with drawn out comb and some honey on the right.

The orange hive seems less organized. Plenty of capped brood.  There were at least 6 Queen cells, full and capped. I destroyed three. I could not find the queen so I didn’t want to take them all away. July is a bad time to swarm but I also want them to be queen right. The top fell off of the orange hive. Probably the bear weakened the screws. Andy has new long screws for it but they aren’t wide enough. We will have to come back and fix that. I trimmed all the weeds in the beeyard. I tested the voltage in the electric fence. The lights is the tester blinked in time with the sound the energizer makes. Probably doesn’t feel pleasant to a bear.