Thursday, September 9, 2010

Let's hope I Have Saved Alpha

On Monday I opended up Alpha to see if there was any more wax moth damage. There was good activity outside the hive with some bees coming in with pollen. I was saisfied with  the ammount of honey and pollen inside the hive. I did not see the queen. However, I did see brood. It looked like the brood was in a narrow age range. i saw one bee with a small deformed wing. I did not see any mites. Ther SHB inside, more than I cared for but I am not overly alarmed. I also saw one adult wax moth, two larvae, but not web.

There was one queen cell that looked like a queen had hatched. I also saw an acorn cell. I did not see any drones.

I added a solid bottom and new botttom brood box to the hive. I also re-installed the cleaned frames (4) that I had taken out earlier. I plan to clean the screened bottom board and hive box to use again.

The hive seems to be doing OK. I hope to check it again in about a week. I have it pared down to just the two brood boxes in hopes that they will fight the wax moths a little better. I'll open the hive again this weekend to see how things are going.

I wanted to check on Beta, but I didn't have time. It was Labor Day afterall and I had a lunch to go to. I  need to take off the supers. I really don't think there is any nectar left out there.

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