Just a brief visit to the hive this time as I knew the small one was queenless, and the other hive needed its empty super taken off now they’ve cleaned it up.
It was a beautiful day and the bees were very calm. They have a lot of Varroa so I need to perform a heat treatment on them now the super of honey can be removed. The count has increased a lot in the last few weeks so I’m curious as to why.
The bees have built a lot of crossed comb in the super – basically where they don’t stick to the parallel orientation with the combs on the frames, but they curve round between them. If you don’t use sheets of foundation in the frames this can happen, but then if you don’t use foundation the honey is extracted by cutting out the combs anyway so it doesn’t matter!
The bees also love to propolise, as you can see here from the sticky, toffee-like deposits on the boxes:
It smells amazing too! I will go back next week to carry out the thermal treatment.
Wayward Bee 
Thanks Jennifer. xo
You’re welcome 🙂