Decided to a quick inspection of 2 of my hives that are kept at a location from my other 10 hives.
Well I sure found out why it important to first of all to keep all your needed tools together in one tool box and second why leveling the hive stand is so important.
I get the site of my hives and find out I don't have my hive tool & I grabbed the wrong jacket (the one without the zip that I need help getting out of) anyway at least I had my smoker and matches and my bee brush.
So I open the 1st hive and within a few frame come across a big mess! Some of the frames are shorter than the rest because the guy I got the bees from is working a different size hive to mine, anyway so the bees built some comb under the frames but since my hives were not level side to side they built all wonky and when I moved the frames the comb broke off! To my dismay I see lava in the broken comb!! On closer inspection I discover that it is all drome brood so I stop panicing and don't feel bad about removing the mess and disposing of the comb, lava and all. The second hive is not so bad because it was standing a little more level than the other one and they had almost no brood in the 'extra' comb.
Other than that both hives are doing great and the queens are doing a great job of filling in the frames with healthy brood! And the girls were super calm! Only had one bee 'chase' me as I left, buzzing madly and butting me every so often to keep me moving - LOL.
P.S: I used the back of my bee brush to pry the frames loose - not as good as a hive tool but it did the job... :roll:
Topic: Surprise inspection (Read 1025 times)