July 21st was our next hive check. We knew from our last hive check with the Sanders that all the hives were doing good so we were just checking to make sure they had space and still had queens.
Abigail smokes all the hives. Three of the hives had two supers on at this point.
Here is Abigail smoking the top of her hive. We only checked Green Gables, Lakti, and Maylyn. (The three hives with supers.)
Abigail started looking into her top super as Bethany started opening her hive up.
Abigail is seeing how much honey is on her frame. In order to harvest as much of the honey as possible, most of the honey should be capped. The frame Abigail is holding is not ready to be extracted because half of the frame is not capped.
Bethany inspected Lakti’s top super. They had frames that were not filled up at all. They had some frames ready for extraction, but not as many as Green Gables.
Mom started to inspect Maylyn. For an established hive Maylyn did not have as much honey as we expected. Bethany is inspecting Lakti’s second super. This super was much more filled. Because the bees were storing so much honey in their deeps, we switched Lakti’s top super with their bottom super. This would hopefully encourage the bees to fill in the second super instead of their deeps.
All the hives were filling there frames with lots of honey. The supers were incredibly heavy and hard to lift.
Here Abigail is moving her second super so that she can inspect the top deep. All three hives had brood in all stages and had plenty of room. As you can see Abigail is wearing orange rubber gloves. She switched to these gloves because her normal gloves were too big and it was hard for her to grab frames. The orange gloves are a lot tighter. The bees can sting through them, but it really does not hurt.
Our bees were doing well and storing lots of honey. We were excited about the amount of honey because it was almost time to extract.
Abigail