We got back into town and the bee tools had arrived! We opened it up Sunday. Everything is looking good. Real hard not to squish them though. I feel bad about that.
About 4 pretty full frames of honey in the super, and most of the middle frames of the super were full of brood.
I noticed the honey was on the outer frames, and the inner frames seemed like they were either empty or brood. I think our bee dealer may have set it up like that in advance of dropping it off. I thought they typically work the middle first then move out.
I also noticed a fair amount of burr/brace/misc comb. I think the frames may have gotten jostled during transport and left too much space in between. I didn't really do much to fix that - but i'll try and arrange things nicely next time. I did scrape some of it to use to prep my top bars. It's nice to have some wax around for stuff like that.
One of the middle frames in the super was basically empty - they were putting wax in, and it had a big burr comb with some brood. I pulled that one and put a top bar in, hopefully they'll build it out with brood. I want to get some brood and honey top bar frames set up in the medium super so I can more easily make splits in the future.
I'm hoping the brood expansion up into the super means they want more bees because the forage is good. I'll be adding another super next week - late in the season but it's warm enough i don't think it'll cause problems. They have about 2 frames worth of space in the super and probably about a frame and a half in the body. Most of the space in the hive body is on the outside - i hear that is frequently left empty anyhow.
The outer side of the leftmost frame in the hive body was basically empty. Not a lot of action there. Only checked 6 or 7 frames in the hive body - they seemed to be getting angrier so I decided to call it a day. Didn't see the queen.
In the hive body, there was a frame that was real heavy and had lots of uncapped honey in it. Also lots of frames covered in bees and brood. I'm not sure i saw any pollen stored, but we'll see.
I had a veil and smoker, no gloves but long sleeve shirt. After I accidentally squished one, another bee stung the cuff of my shirt. Missed me by like 1/8 inch.
I noticed a lot of the brood comb in the hive body was black. I think that means it's old, right?
There were some parts of the black comb whose tops were wavy kind of like acoustic foam or that mattress foam stuff. Didn't see any bees on it where it was like that. Anybody know if that has a special purpose? The rest of that same comb was covered in bees, so I figure they weren't using the wavy parts. I may cut it out if it stays unused, but i'd hate to ruin the old black comb.
Next week: hopefully the top bar is built out, and on goes the super either way. I'll check a few frames in the hive body too.
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