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Temperature: 22C
Weather: Warm and sunny
Stings: None

D'oh. Last visit I put in the Porter bee escape to get all the bees in the top brood box into the lower box so they could build up their stores for the winter. When I turned up this week the bees all looked busy and angry. When I cracked the cover board on the top brood box they boiled out and I wondered what was making them so grumpy. I soon found out. It turned out that I had put the bee escape in upside down. Well, I had put the crown board in upside down and the escape was taped to it so that's how it got messed up. Image via Wikipedia

There were lots of dead bees on the crown board and I was lucky in that the escape had got so clogged with dead bodies that other ones could not get through. It could have been much worse as, without that, all the foragers could have been trapped in that upper box. On the upside all the frames in that upper brood box are now very well drawn and empty so will be a good store for next year.

I re-arranged the crown board so the bees could get out and into the lower box. I need to get some sugar to feed the bees too as it does not look like they have enough stored to see them through.