August 30
The 4th top box which formerly was all capped honey now has brood in it and just a few full combs of honey.
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
More brood in the 3rd box.
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
A number of queen cups, but nobody was home:
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The 2nd box was also being used for brood
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The bottom box was still not fully drawn
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
It was being used for pollen
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The hive certainly had a whole lot of bees spilling out all over the place, a whole lot of brood and little room above brood for honey with the goldenrod flow started.
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
We moved the bottom box to the top and seeded a new box below in case such a strong population needed more to keep them busy.
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
September 20
The goldenrods had mostly finished and the asters were making themselves apparent.
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The entrance was extremly busy with fast moving bees, and I believe that is a drone pupa being removed:
The top box had a good bit of honey
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
but they actually expanded to have a bit more brood here too:
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The 4th box
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
still had a fairly large amount of capped brood:
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The 3rd box was also devoted to brood
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
containing larvae. We also noted some DWV here too:
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
And what might be k-wing:
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The 2nd box was also brood:
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
The bottom box had very little new comb and it was all empty. We removed this box from the hive.
Photo by: Shawn Caza / CC: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
It would appear the goldenrod flow was good enough to stimulate the bees to make more brood but not good enough for them to store much. In retrospect some of our recent managment choices look rather poor. Needless to say so many bees are likely going to need feed to get them through the winter.