august 10th inspection
A quick thanks to Erik and Liz for doing the inspection one week ago while I was in the Boundary Waters. The honey you collected has been delicious to sample and gives me excitement for the upcoming harvest. The walleye fishing was excellent on Marshall and Swan Lakes for your information.
the new electric fence
Today’s inspection was difficult. I have erected an electric fence since my last post and getting over it is a bit of a trick, but certainly possible. I am glad to have the task of fencing behind me as the fall approaches and the bears begin their foraging for the winter. In any event, the hardest part of today’s inspection was the sheer weight of the deeps. I have trouble lifting them by myself at this point and even some of the frames laden with honey are really heavy.
The honey super is looking great. About 7 of the 10 frames have comb drawn out to 50 to 60% of their surface area and are already being filled with honey. Frames one and nine and ten had little to no comb drawn out and I moved these toward the middle, taking some of the middle frames and placing them on the outsides of the super. Hopefully this will result in more uniform honey deposition.
The top deep was almost exclusively capped honey with the exception of a few scattered drone cells on a couple of frames. Other than that, it appears the top deep is mostly devoted to honey storage as well.
The middle and bottom deeps have a varied collection of capped and uncapped honey, capped brood, uncapped brood and pollen. I did not see any eggs on today’s inspection and I did not see the queen. I found fewer queen cells as well. Maybe 2 in the middle deep and 3 in the bottom deep. I was greatly dismayed on the last frame, number 9, on the bottom as I completed my inspection. The frame slipped off the edge of the bottom box where I was inspecting it and as it slid, it gashed the capped honey on one side. This frame appeared to have only honey with no brood and I did not see the queen here, though many of the girls were knocked off into the grass and flowers and some were lost due to the trauma. The entire hive became quite agitated but by the time I closed everything up again, the hive seemed to have calmed down. This is not something I want to repeat ever again.
honey!
I took a few pictures today of the new fence and a couple of some drones emerging from their cells. I will try to upload those later today.
