Our first fall inspection was really gratifying, when Rob pulled the outer cover off of the hive, the ladies immediately poked their heads out of the hole in the inner cover requiring a couple of puffs of smoke.

Prying back the inner cover we saw…

…the top deep box chock full of bees!

Pulling the top deep box off we saw…

…the bottom deep full of bees!

So, despite the setback we had with our bees swarming in June, our girls seem to have recovered nicely in time for winter. All in all we counted sixteen full frames of bees in both boxes, estimating about two thousand bees per frame – that gives us thirty six thousand bees! And that’s just the girls on hive duty (nurse bees, queen attendants, janitor bees, and bees ripening honey).

The bees have been going full bore for at least a week, we saw hundreds of them going in and out of the hive entrance.

In the lower box we saw a few frames with pollen (look carefully).

Some frames of brood and larva (probably about three to four frames full of brood).

In the top deep we saw the bees preparing their winter stores, with about four almost full frames of honey.

It was good to see them doing well!

They were back filling the top combs as the brood was hatching out (honey in the top left, ripening honey in the middle, and brood in the lower right of this frame).

We pulled the screened bottom board off of the hive, and replaced it with the solid board in preparation for winter. Rob did a mite count, and got an average drop of 46 mites per day which is just below the treatment thresh hold. He will go to the local store in Portland tomorrow to pick up some supplies, and talk a little about wintering bees.