A Beautiful Day in the hives...

I decided to check the hives today (August 18, 2022) because the weather is so nice, as you can see from the picture above. My plan was to check progress and collect honey if there was any ready. I did prepare a medium super of drawn comb to put on top of the vertical hive. I opened it first. The bees have moved up into the second deep, which is good. They are still mostly on the drawn comb, as I expected. So, I put the medium of drawn comb on top, and we will see what happens.

Then I checked the blue hive. I believe we may be in a slight dearth at the moment, between major blooms. They were a little testy about me taking anything away, and immediately went to anything that had any honey dripping off it. They have begun to at least put a little comb in every frame but the last two. I checked and found a lot of full frames of honey, but they were not capped. Many were being worked on. There is still some brood in frames further toward the front, which I expect will be filled with honey when the brood emerges. So, I did not remove any frames, but did put one empty drawn comb in the middle and moved a partially drawn frame to the back. The goldenrod and other fall flowers are just starting to bloom, so I expect the fall flow to begin in earnest soon. The almost five inches of rain we got a week or so ago will go a long way to help that.

I did not check the tan hive today. I don't expect to collect more honey from that hive this season, so I will wait until I am ready to prepare it for winter.