From the honey production point of view, this colony doesn't look good. We didn't find many frames with honey in the super.
Such frame, when full with honey will weight about 4kg. I'll try to arrange these frames a little.
I have now removed the honey frames from the super and we can now visit the core colony. In a strong colony frames need to be full with bees.
Because this is a stationary apiary, the colonies were developed according to the forage periods. The Queen is stimulated to lay eggs on a harvest period.
This is an empty frame. Because there was an empty space underneath it, the bees have built this comb which has a some honey. This is a pure wax wonder of the bees.
This is a frame that used in production, stimulates the production of wax and more. Its cells will be perfect for drone brood.
The most important role for this frame is that it keeps varroa under control. We know that this parasite prefers the drone brood and we can eliminate lots of varroa using this frame.
This is the great advantage of this frame: It helps us to naturally keep varroa under control.
I need to brush away these bees, but I can't find the brush. Wait I have here a natural brush: Acacia leaves. They are great for this kind of job.
The advantage is that I can use these leaves per colony tossing them out when I move to another hive. Using a brush, there is a risk of carrying various "stuff" from one hive to another.
Why did bees build this comb under the frame? Primarily because they will build first inside the nest and then they will start building in the super.
There are more chances to find the frames with honey inside the colony. The fact that this hive is nove very populated makes me believe that this colony has no plans to swarm very soon.
Here we have a good frame with honey and bees. The bees place the honey inside the colony first and then they move in the super.
Let's leave this frame here to make some room in the hive.
We will extract the honey from these frames but we will leave the ones with the brood untouched. We do not want to affect the young generation of bees. In here we have capped honey.
To extract the honey we need remove the caps from the frame. These caps are truly phenomenal and they are a natural medicine.
The caps are different than propolis. This is propolis. It's a resin with excellent properties. Among its uses by the bees, it is the one where they cover the walls of the cell to prepare it for egg laying.
Note here the beginning of a queen cell. They will be used to raise future queens.
Let's shake this frame and a brush it with our special brush :)
I'll try and organize these frames inside the colony immediately after the honey is extracted.
In here we have a frame form inside the colony and observe the fight for space between the Queen and the bees. When a young bee emerged from a cell, behind it the cell was filled with honey.
The Queen has lost some laying space and this will lead to a blockage inside the colony.
This fight for space happened before a super was placed on top of this beehive.
