Looking Good!

Today - August 14, 2021, I checked all three hives. The vertical hive had an almost full super of honey, YEA! I did not collect any, but put an empty super underneath it for them to fill. We will collect some honey on the field day on the 21st and do some extracting. The hive looked great, so that is all I did there. Next I checked the blue long hive. The bees have been bearding at the entrance, so I had to make sure they had not attached comb to the bottom. When I opened it up, I realized there are just a LOT of bees in there! They had at least five or six full deeps of honey. I moved those apart and put empty frames between them to encourage them to fill more. I didn't collect any from there, either. I didn't see any comb attachment from the inside. I worked hard to pry out the entrance reducer, which did seem to clear up some of the congestion. Just to be sure, I probed the front entrance with a cold uncapping knife, which was long enough to reach about six frames back. I did not run into anything, with that, so they are probably just fine. After I removed the entrance reducer, they seemed a lot happier. The tan long hive is doing well, Since it was the late nuc, it is about where the other two were on the last check, with no real honey yet, but that is fine. I will probably not collect any honey from that hive this year anyway, so it can build up nicely for overwintering. Since I know for sure there are 60 - 100 hives competing for forage in a small area, I am extremely pleased with the progress and strength of my hives.