The girls looked like they had made good headway in filling up the two brood chambers, so it was time to put the first honey super. I went in pretty early in the day, around 10:30 a.m., when the mass of them would be out in the field scouting out nectar and pollen. I usually don’t use smoke, because it sets them back a bit (they gorge on honey in anticipation of a potential emergency move). Instead, I prefer sugar water in a spray bottle, but for some reason decided to go with smoke this time. It was kind of a pain to keep it lit, though, so I ended up switching back to the water.
I checked the brood in the lower chambers and it was solid, so I was on my way. One of my queen excluders had to be jerry-rigged a bit on the sides with duct tape, the other was more normal. I just laid it right on top of the upper box, plopped the 3/4 Western on top of that, added a feeding chamber as icing on the cake, and topped it off with the lid. Nuthin’ to it.
