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GENERAL BEEKEEPING - MAIN POSTING FORUM. / Re: What did you do in your Apiary/Bee yard today?
« Last post by The15thMember on Today at 06:23:09 pm »And another hive inspection is in the books. I have a couple of questions regarding this inspection. In the deep box, is that building of comb normal? They're not filling out the frames too well.I don't use foundation, but it looked normal to me. Comb building is a lot of work, it may take them some time if your flow isn't strong. You mentioned at the end that you saw bees hanging onto each other. That could be bees festooning, where they make kind of a scaffolding with their bodies as they build comb. I'm assuming bees on foundation still do this behavior.
And should a new colony like this be building practice queen cells? Was I wrong to just leave them there?Some colonies build a lot of queen cups seemingly just to have them in case they need them. I have several colonies that keep cups built for most of the summer, but they are never charged (they don't have an egg or larva in them). I was a little surprised that they had made so many, but until one has an egg or larva in it or is drawn out into a full queen cell, I wouldn't be too concerned about it.
And on a frame or two, for some reason I was unable to determine if it was honey or brood. That would be to the outside in the medium box. I ask about it in the video. It should be easy for me to determine but I wasn't able to.It can be a bit tough if the wax is very light, but to me it looked like that frame had brood in the middle.