It's not just about the honey in August. I've got to make sure the hives are in good shape to raise the "fat bees" this fall that will over-winter.
One queen had a problem that I'd heard about but not seen yet.
This frame had a lot of pollen and honey in the corners and lots of open brood but something was wrong. It's easy to see the queen cell on the left. What's going on?
Here's a closer look. Can you see how the capped cells poke out instead of looking flat?
This is almost all drone brood. The queen was laying worker brood a few weeks ago but then she stopped and is only laying drones. She was a supersedure from almost two years ago (born in August) and I think she didn't have enough drones to mate with and has run out of sperm.
The good news is that she was showing signs of winding down and I replaced her with a new queen earlier in the summer. I put the old queen in a nuc because I didn't have the heart to kill her. I was hoping the nuc would produce some honey frames for the bank before it petered out at the end of summer.
I didn't want thousands of drones hatching out in the bee yard, so I had to pull those frames and stuck them in the freezer to kill the brood. There's still a nice supply of honey and pollen in there so those will go back in the big hives to recycle.
Next up: mite control! Yikes.
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