Hive inspection today

[GSF]

It's been 15 days since my last inspection. A few days ago I lifted up the top and seen a bunch (15ish) SHBs. I had concern about that and I wanted to see what they had done since I added the other deep brood box.

Well the good news is out of two brood deeps I saw (at the most) 5 SHBs. None in the beetle barns. My hive gets a lot more direct sunlight that it did before I moved it so that may have had a lot to do with the low number of SHBs as well. I finally learned what kind of bees I have. They are Minnesota Hygienic Italians. In reading I understand that they may have somewhat of a resistance to the foulbrood diseases. I do know they will chase a SHB in a heartbeat and they are pretty good about discarding larva/pupas as well.

On the top brood box (bb) (aka the first brood box my package was put in 5 weeks ago) It looked pretty good to me. I saw brood in all manner of development, egg to pre-pupa, pupa, capped cells, and cells being chewed through. I saw pollen, honey, and sugar water - I guess. In addition I saw the queen but she didn't show up in my pictures. I saw her again as I was placing the frame back in the box. No drone or queen cells. On the top bb I saw a lot of cells where bees had hatched but I didn't notice any eggs in them. I figure they are still in the process of cleaning them out. My colony is much larger than what it was last inspection.  One side of one of the outer frames didn't have any comb drawn out so I put it in the middle by the queen.

Now on the bottom bb, the one I added because of no room at the inn, I didn't see squat. Except two foundation cells looked like they had some pollen in them. I do realize from beeks on the board that although the top bb was pretty packed, the capped cells went to hatching, thus freeing up some space. There were probably 3 to 5 hundred bees in the bottom bb. Like I say there was nothing pretty much except the 8 foundation frames I put in there. No cells being drawn out, notta. I figure I'll leave it there. It won't be but a couple three more weeks and the fall flowers will break out. It'll be there if they need it, and they probably will.

I read where some folks feed 1:1 sugar water to encourage building up wax cells. Any thoughts or tips about my observations?

[GSF]

>I figure I'll leave it there..,

I was tempted to swap some empty frames from below but wasn't sure if this would be the right thing to do. Usually nature knows what to do and I didn't want to booger things up.

[Red Belly]

Bees like to work up I've been told. I always add new boxes on top and have good luck with them taking to it

[GSF]

thanks.

[10framer]

bees work down in nature.   

[sc-bee]

bees work down in nature.  

That is correct  but they also don't like that empty overhead space when you add a super.