updates

jamaica

it's been ten days since we were last in the hives and i was very curious to see what the girls have been up to. we looked at jamaica's hive first and discovered that it was very full indeed! She has brood on 7 of 8 frames in each deep and all of the frames except for 1 or 2 sides had beautifully drawn out honey comb, filled of course. we decided to do an addition to her house, and added a third deep. we sprayed the empty foundation on the frames with sugar syrup and we decided to start feeding them again, to give them a bit of help drawing out comb on the 8 empty frames. we're in a bit of a dry spell and there are signs that the nectar flow is dwindling.

astoria

in astoria's hive, the bottom deep had significant space due to brood hatching out. there are a ton of bees in this hive and we had quite the time trying to spot astoria with each of the frames absolutely loaded with bees. we finally found her in the second deep on a frame that wasn't completely packed with bees. we added a third deep to this hive about three weeks ago and they haven't done much in terms of drawing out comb in it. today, we saw that they have begun to draw out comb in the middle two frames, but there are 6 empty frames yet to be worked on. we're thinking of starting to feed this hive again, to encourage them to build comb for their third story. i think they need the extra room!