Picture from the Lair!

Yesterday, I visited the Lair to make sure that they hadn't run out of room, and I think all three hives have just the right amount of room left so I didn't add any extra supers.  Here's the picture showing the final height of the three hives:

On the left side, the top super is about a third full, the middle hive (significantly taller than me now) is around 70% finished with the 8th super and hasn't significantly started on the 9th, and the right hive is only around 50% finished with the 5th super.

It was only 4 days since I added the top boxes, so with any luck and good weather, the nectar will continue to flow and the top supers will get filled out.  If not, I'll be stuck with some partially-filled frames, but I can either swap some full, lower frames with the partly-filled ones or use the partial frames to bolster some of our weaker hives at the Acreage (probably both).  I want 2-3 supers full of honey going into winter, and while I can potentially feed the hives sugar-water after we harvest on August 21, it will be a hassle and I'd prefer to simply let the bees backfill the lower boxes as winter approaches.  I hope to have around 100 lbs of honey left for the bees when they go into winter which translates to about 3 Medium supers at a low estimate of 35 lbs apiece.

Lair Update

Over a week ago, on a Tuesday morning, once again I found that the center hive had totally filled the top super (after only about a week!) and the two outer hives had just barely started thinking about working on their 5th super.

As before, I took the untouched 5th super from the right hive and placed it on the center hive right away, and then came back on Thursday after my dad delivered two more supers now empty from the honey extraction for the center and right hives. Unfortunately, I end up rather distracted when I'm at the Lair, and while Jen (a Lair native) took some great pictures of the hives, I forgot, so I can't show how the middle hive has grown to a bit taller than me!

Just yesterday (August 4)  I visited the hives again with another 2 supers.  I quickly inspected the left hive and found that boxes 4 and 5 were totally drawn out and mostly full of honey.  I dug down deeper into the hive and found beautiful brood patterns (seen below) and found a frame of eggs and larvae proving that the queen was there within the last 3 days.

I was short on time and I'd hurt my shoulder earlier in the week (trying to start my lawnmower) so I didn't inspect the other two hives, but I checked the top boxes and found that the 7th box was full of honey and largely capped, and the 8th box was 80% drawn out, and probably 60 or 70% full of curing nectar.  I added a 9th super to the middle hive to keep them collecting as long as the nectar flow continues.

Here's a picture of a fully capped frame of honey on the very edge of the brood nest.  I'm not 100% sure, but I believe this was from the 3rd frame from the end in the 4th box from the ground.  I didn't see any brood in the 5th or higher boxes so harvesting should go very well.

The right hive is still the slowest, having drawn out the 5th box only about 60%.  I will bring 2-3 supers on Monday or Tuesday to add room to the middle and right hives, and possibly the left hive if they've made good progress in the half-week since I last added another super.

I think adding supers to just the center and right hives will be sufficient.  I might lose out on 20-50 pounds of honey that they'd otherwise pack away, but if you provide an excess of space right up to the end of the nectar flow, you have to deal with the large number of partially-drawn and partially-filled frames in the top super.  You can steal some honey from lower down and fill the partially-filled frames by feeding the bees sugar water, but since I can't be out at the lair twice a week, I'd like to avoid fall feeding if I can.

That means I'll have to harvest maybe 25-50 lbs (1-2 boxes) less honey than I otherwise could, and letting the bees fill up the hives to the top might mean they don't collect a similar amount, but at 25+ lbs per box, I'm already looking at over 200 lbs of honey from these two hives, and since my distribution network only had to handle 25 lbs or so last year, I'm not sure I'll notice the "loss."

Assuming good weather, we've tentatively planned to harvest the honey (brush the bees off each frame so that the bee-free capped honey can be transported to the Acreage and extracted) on the morning of Sunday, August 21.  Then I may start extracting in the evening, or wait until Monday evening after work to uncap and extract the honey from the honeycomb.