4th of July inspection

We harvested our first honey during 4th of July weekend last year. We were not that successful this year. We lost one colony, had to requeen two others.
I could have collected one super and one top bar section from my Warre. I decided to leave all honey in. Last year I took too much and weakened the colony, not knowing that there is no nectar flow in Florida during July and August.
This year I will wait till fall and harvest after the Brazilian pepper flow. If there will be anything to harvest. For now I am happy that the bees are surviving.
The colony that got a new queen three weeks ago is still pretty weak. I added frame full of brood from my strongest hive to help them out.
I also added the last hive to the bottom of my Warre. The third hive was more than half full of comb. I will not be able to come back for a month so I want to make sure that bees have enough space to work in.
I also put together new hive body. Special one with observation window. I love watching bee activity in the Warre, so I figured why I could not do the same in regular Langsroth. Friend of mine modified a regular hive wall.



He cut a hole in the side and inserted a plexiglass window.
Now I will be able to view the progress of my hive without disturbing them. All my grandma's brood boxes had observation windows. I used to watch bees through them when I was a kid.
Can't wait to start new colony in this hive.

Lost my first hive!

Today I lost my first hive. The inspector came and checked all my hives. I have passed the inspection, but he recommended that I destroy the weak hive. It had hive beetle and waxmoth infestation. Additionally some of the brood seemed like it could have EFB. There was no point trying to save it. The bees were not able to liberate a new queen last week and the hive was so weak that it was overrun by all possible bee pests.
I dug out a hole, placed the brood box with all frames and bees in it. Doused it with gasoline and set on fire :(

Queen is dead

Well, one of the new queens did not make it. The hive was so weak that they were not able to get through the candy in the queen box. When I did my first inspection after the queen introduction the candy was chewed half way through but the queen and all bees that were with her were dead in the box.
This hive has lot of issues. Hive beetles are running everywhere, waxmoth is taking residence in the super, there is no queen and bees are not motivated to raise one.
I have an inspection scheduled in two days. I'll wait to see what the inspector says.

New royalty arrived

Today we went to pick up two new queens. we got them from Miksa apiaries. They carry excellent bloodlines.
I installed the queens in my oldest hive and the queenless split. They both were witout a queen for few weeks and did not seem interested raising a new one. No supercedures were visible in either hive

Time lapse of bee activity in my Warre

Today I set up a camera to record activity in my Warre hive. I was insterested to see how the bees manage the cells that were built on one of the windows, creating nice crossection through the cells.
I recorded over 5 hours of bee activity and compressed it into 4.5 minutes. My Warre hive has observation windows so we can see what the bees are doing during the honey flow.
Watch the top cells in the left comb. The bees will eat the honey, clean up the empty cell and start filling it with fresh honey.
Also, the left comb appears to have some sort of parasite (wax moth larvae?) operating in the middle between the left and right side cells.

We have new queen

Well, the nature takes care of itself. The control hive must have swarmed for sure. But there is a new queen there. Stick eggs are everywhere and there are at least 3 queen cells with dead larvae in them. The new queen is defending her territory

Screened bottom boards and swarm?

I have added screened bottom boards to the remaining two Lang hives. Now the only hive without the screened bottom board is the Warre. I will probably add it to the hive as well since there seems to be quite few bees at the entrance fanning like crazy. The temperature is already close to 90F during the day. The screen should help with ventilation and hopefully with the hive beetles as well.
I've added Beetle Jail to all three Langsroths to eliminate as many of these invaders as possible.

it appears that the new hive (the one that was a control to the split) lost a large number of bees. Swarm? There were at least three empty queen cells. The population seems to be halsf of what it was when I brought it in 4 weeks ago. Also there was one frame with stick eggs, but no brood anywhere.
that is what i get for leaving them alone.