Hive Inspections

I was finally able to go out and inspect our three Langstroth hives for the first time this year. I've checked them from the outside and was happy with the activity there but this is the first time I was able to get inside them. The weather was warm but quite breezy. We smoked the bees but found them all rather calm. The wind, I think, made them hunker down in the frames rather than come out after us.

Not sure how to keep track of each hive so we'll call them Hive1 (north), Hive2(south) and Hive3 (caught from a swarm).

Hive2 was the first one we got into. We had let her overwinter with the brood box, a large super full of honey and another large super about half full of honey. We wrapped all our hives with black tar paper before it got to cold making sure to leave plenty of ventilation. We found the queen in the second box. She's been busy. lots of brood comb. Also several empty queen cells (some in the middle of the frame and some on the bottom). We damaged some of the drone brood cells that were between frames and we found voroa mites in them. We're gonna watch this one for swarms. Possibly get a screen on the bottom also. We did place a queen excluder on top of the second box.

Hive3 was the weakest of our colonies last fall so she wintered with the brood box, a full large super and 2 partially full supers (4 high). Also wrapped in Tar paper. This hive has preferred the top entrance since the day we caught them (last July - I know it was late in the year). We found the queen in the top box. There were several frames of brood. The bottom three boxes were full of crystalized honey. You could tell they had been eating it as a lot of it had been opened up and there were little white grains dropped all over the place. This hive was filthy inside. I was surprised to see all the junk that the bees had been dropping in there.There were dead bees, white grains of crystalized honey and feces all over the floor of the bottom box. The bees were stacked so high, the front bottom entrance was entirely blocked. We cleaned out all the dead and swept up best we could. We left a full box of the best looking frames of crystalized honey on top of the brood box (we put her back on the bottom). The others boxes of crystalized honey we'll clean up and reuse the frames. Didn't notice any mites in this hive but didn't break open any brood cells looking either.

Hive1 was the last box we got into. She's been the strongest all along. The top box had black mold on the north side, and on several of the frames. We removed and discarded the frames with mold on them. We'll have to improve ventilation in this hive. There were a lot of brood cells in this hive also. Again, we didn't see any mites, but we didn't break open any cells looking for them. We found the queen in the 2nd box (we left her there, but put a queen excluder on top of the second box).

We'll probably try to split the 2 strongest colonies in the next month (as soon as we can acquire some queens).

In all we were very pleased with the strength of all three colonies. We'll probably install mite screens on all three boxes. We're gonna watch for swarms also.