August 8th Inspection
I inspected the four main hives in the backyard apiary this morning. The split from Hegemone is replacing its queen. From the amount of capped drone cells, I’d say that the previous queen didn’t mate very well. There were a few capped and uncapped queen cells. They haven’t drawn out any more comb and their honey stores were looking a little empty. I removed two frames, one from each the top and bottom box and put the deep frame feeder. I ordered the wrong part from Brushy Moutain and ended up with a deep frame feeder instead of a medium. That should be enough food to keep them going and possibly encourage them to draw out a little bit more comb. I’m not sure if the hive will build up enough to survive a winter. I’m not sure if I’ll combine it with another hive or see if it can survive the winter.
Antheia is strong and doing well. The queen is laying in the bottom two boxes and the third box is mostly capped honey. As the strongest hive in the yard, I think that the hive has been getting most of the syrup from the communal feeding. Since all frames were fully drawn or mostly drawn, I gave the hive back it’s fourth box and pulled a frame of brood up from the second box. They already have plenty of stores for winter, so I’m hoping that they’ll draw more frames that can be given to other hives.
The split with the purchased queen is doing well. They still haven’t fully drawn the second box. I refilled the entrance feeder for the first time since the spring honey flow. The hive is strong enough that robbing shouldn’t be an issue.
Hegemone is doing well. I found some cocoons on the outside under the outer cover and on the bottom of the hive below the screened bottom. Could possibly be wax moth, but I’ll never know because I crushed them all. I saw a hornet snatch a bee off the top of the hive. My attempts to burn the hornet with the butane torch failed and it flew off.
I wanted to keep feeding the top bar hive without the flaws of using the screen. I bought a 2.75″ hole drill bit. This is the size needed for a regular mouth jar. It’s a very snug fit, so its best to either widen the hole with a file or use the drill to widen the hole a little bit.

