My neighbor Lesli popped over yesterday to drop off some empty jars. She’d been asking for a tour for some time, so I took advantage of the excuse to take a break and tend to the hives.
Both had two honey supers, and both were almost full, with the outer frames filled, if not completely capped (below left). There was quite a few drone cells in the sunny hive up in the upper super, with some worker cells as well (below middle). (I don’t use a queen excluder. I tell myself its because I want to ‘go natural’ and let the bees tend the hive their own way, but really it’s because I’m exceedingly and increasingly lazy.)
I added a third honey super to each, this time slotting it in between the two existing supers rather than layering it on top (consistent with the advice I received on my Movin’ Up post) and sealed it back up without digging down much further.
As I went to write this post, I happened upon the pictures I took last year, and realized that I had put on four honey supers on the sunny hive by mid-July 2007. Another sign of a dry year.
