A Surprise and a little help

I had hoped to go over and add a super to my two vertical hives sometime this weekend, but I wanted some help with the lifting, and no one at home currently was totally thrilled about helping, but would have come if I asked. Everyone has a beesuit, some just enjoy using it more than others! Then, to my complete surprise, my daughter Elizabeth walked in fresh from PA! I had thought she wouldn't be home until Thanksgiving, so it was really exciting to see her! She is my prime bee helper, but has been gone to college for two years and stayed to work there this summer. So when I said, "would you like to help me put a couple supers on my hives?" She quickly said yes. Here she is in her bee suit, taking a selfie for all her friends at school (who totally do not understand this strange side of her).

It was very fun for both of us, today. The hives looked terrific! It is so exciting to have four healthy, strong hives, making honey, lots of traffic on the entrances. We added a super to the taller of the two hives. It had done more work in the top box in the last two weeks. It was not full, but with two weeks until the next field day, I wanted to give them no excuses to not make honey! The small hive, which covered four frames two weeks ago, had eight today! We had added two frames of capped brood to that hive two weeks ago. We added an empty box to them as well in case they double again in two weeks.

We checked both long hives just to see how they were doing. The blue one still has tons of bees on the entrance and seems to have completely filled the empty frames I put in two weeks ago. I didn't do anything today, just wanted to show Liz how well they are doing. The white long hive was covering ten or eleven frames and looking good.

The plan is still to collect honey and EXTRACT in two weeks when we have the next field day on August 11th.