Hi Everyone,
This entire past week the girls have been washboarding. Large numbers of them. So many in fact the the returning foragers are having a hard time gaining entrance to the hive. They end up landing wherever they can, on the porch, on the washboarders (if that's not a word it should be!), on the hive body, wherever, and enter by walking over the washboarders. I don't think they ever stop washboarding! When I visit the hive in the morning, there they are, scooting back and forth. Mid-day it's the same thing. My last visit of the day? Yep, there they are! This has gone on all week! Don't they get tired? It makes me think of young kids at a RAVE! The other bizarre aspect of this? Nobody seems to know why they do it! Come on, really? No one?
We inspected my hive today and it is chock full of bees. There's still two and a half undrawn frames in the top deep. The bottom deep is completely drawn and both deeps have LOTS of brood, capped, uncapped larva of different ages, and eggs. So I made an executive decision. Add a medium super. It's undrawn plasticell foundation. My goal in doing this is NOT to get honey for myself. My goal is to give them more room and I hope that they will have more resources for the upcoming winter. If nothing else maybe I'll have more drawn wax for next year. I have been and will continue to feed them.
I meant for the pics to be between the paragraphs... oh well...
