July 9: Full Hive Inspection

Full frame of capped honey from the hive body

Yesterday we opened up the hive and went through the whole thing, top to bottom, taking out every frame, taking photos, and cleaning off burr comb.  The colony is in great shape!  Lots and lots of honey stored in the deeps, and the super almost all full of nectar.  Looking through the photos later, I took a sort of inventory.

In the super:
3 full frames fully drawn comb full of uncapped nectar
3 full frames fully drawn comb partly full of uncapped nectar
3 1/2 frames mostly drawn comb, partly full of uncapped nectar
1/2 frame mostly undrawn, with traces of nectar in what is drawn

full frame of uncapped nectar from the super

That's a lot, especially considering I just put the super on 2 weeks ago.  The ladies are working hard.

In the hive bodies:
4 frames fully capped honey (see the photo at the top: it's so beautiful.)
8 frames mostly capped honey
1 frame mostly uncapped nectar
7 frames about 1/2 or more full of brood and surrounded with honey and pollen

A frame with brood and a little pollen and capped honey.
They may be transitioning this frame to honey stores.

A frame mostly full of capped brood

A frame mostly full of pollen, with a little capped honey

Once they're done capping all that honey/nectar, this means that conservatively they'll have 14 frames worth of honey stored in the hive itself.  Each frame of honey weighs about 6 pounds, which means they'll have--midsummer--about 84 pounds of honey.  They'll probably add more stores as the summer progresses toward winter.  They only need about 60 pounds to make it through the winter, which means the honey in the super is free for me to harvest.

The only thing that worries me a little is that I didn't see too much pollen.  Only the larvae eat the pollen, though--or, more exactly, the nurse bees eat the pollen, then regurgitate it for the larvae to eat.  As the population of the hive levels out and declines toward fall and winter, they need less pollen.  I'll keep an eye on this, though.

Overall I'm overjoyed with what I saw yesterday.