Petaluma & San Queens

Sunday Morning, about 10am. 70º, clear skies, no wind.

Petaluma: Put the observation board on before I started. I'll check it later on today.

Rachel and I have both noticed that this hive seems to have changed its flight pattern--rather than flying generally south across the lawn at about eye-level to a 5 year old (something that has effectively kept small children off that back lawn for most of the summer).

Opened the hive, and see they have a couple of frames of uncapped honey in the new super I put on. They still seem to be building to the right. When I went to Super1, I saw pollen, capped honey and capped and uncapped brood--they still seem to have a preference to make the center of their nursery on that one frame in the middle that has no foundation, the one they made themselves. I saw no drones, no mites, but I might have seen the queen on that nursery frame I was talking about. But they are still building toward the right. Wonder what that's about?

San Queens: The top super (Super4) has bees passing through it to hang out in the feeder/attic, but there is nothing built that I can see. The only thing they have done is to propolis together all the frames--I seem to remember that this means something about upcoming weather, but I don't remember what.

In Super3, they have 4 of the 7 frames filled and capped with honey. one of them I swear must weigh 10 pounds. The only thing wrong here is that they are building comb and filling it w/ honey between Supers 3 and 2. When I pull Super3 frames there's a mess underneath--are they getting congested in there?