On Wednesday I inspected the North hive at Essie's house. The weather was in the mid 60s and sunny. This was the first inspection of that hive since it was installed a week earlier, on April 18th. Overall this hive has been drinking more syrup than the South hive - about a half gallon in a week. That's still not much compared to what some other people's hives are drinking.
On with the inspection...
Here's the hive as it stands at the edge of the woods. Essie added a brick to the top the other day when it was windy and apparently the top cover blew off!
Here's the view under the inner cover. It doesn't look like a lot is going on but...
It's pretty busy in there! The been let their queen out and are building comb. Unfortunately, they are not building it on the foundation, which is Duragilt and is apparently trash. Instead, they are building comb down from the top bars and sort of attaching it to the foundation in places. This is bound to become a mess, so I may end up ripping out foundation on the remaining undrawn frames and either putting in beeswax foundation or leaving it completely out. I'm going to order some wax foundation and go from there.
Overall, frames 3 and 4 are drawn and they have started on frames 5 and 6 a little.
Here's a look at one of the blobs of comb they have built over the foundation. They know what they are doing; there are fresh eggs in the cells.
The queen cage is all empied out. I removed it from the frame and took off the rubber band.
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