A tight squeeze

Temperature: 27C
Weather: Bright and sunny
Stings: None

This was the first visit for about 10 days - perhaps a bit too long. I've a feeling that what I did today should have been done a while ago. Anyhoo, I gave them lots more space by adding another brood box with undrawn comb in it. There are only nine undrawn frames as two are in the bottom brood box and will hopefully be drawn out pretty quickly.

I also checked the super to see how that was going and it is pretty full. Unfortunately, not all the honey is capped so I can't really take it off yet or get the bees off it as the honey in it is likely just to ferment and be unusable if I do.

I did a quickish check of the lower brood box and it looks now like there is brood across all the frames, lots of it capped too so there are going to be lots more bees around soon and they will need something to do and somewhere to go at night.

The potential problem I have is that they spread themselves too thinly and I don't get many fully-drawn frames and none full enough of stores to see them through the winter. I can feed them to make it work but I'd rather avoid that if I can.

I need the brood frames drawn as the ones I inherited are really lumpy and bumpy. If I can swap them for ones that are better produced it will cut down on problems that would otherwise arise as I'm manipulating them.

I'm planning to go and see them again on Wednesday and give them a thorough look over. More soon.