I hesitate to call it a full inspection. Mark didn't try to find the queen in each hive, nor inspect each frame. Mostly he was checking for any obvious problems and seeing if the bees were doing what they were supposed to with little interference or supervision from him. The short story is: yes, mostly. Please note that Mark had left his gloves in Kemper County, so this entire process was completed with his bare hands. A lot of very experienced beekeepers do so, at least from what I've read, but it was pretty amazing to watch Mark handling all of the frames without protection!Hives 1, 2, & 3 were bearding in the late afternoon heat. The picture above shows you why it's called bearding!
Hive 4, the BBQ bees, had very little activity in or out of the hive, and the feeder was not empty. Mark opted to take a frame of brood with a few nurse bees from Hive 3 and put in Hive 4 in hopes of boosting their numbers.
Hive 3, rather than spending their time building on the empty frames on the other end of the super, decided to maintain their building project between the tops of the frames and the moving screen.
This time, the "burr comb" had honey in it. I was dispatched to the truck to find something to put it in. [Note to self: always make sure small containers and a bucket go with the beekeeper.] Mark wielded his handy dandy hive The most exciting news is that the top deep super on Hive 1 is FULL of honey. I mean, look at this gorgeous capped honey comb. Mark said it was so heavy he couldn't move it to check in the bottom super for proper queen activity.
We removed the feeders from Hive 4 and Hive 5 as they weren't in use. When we returned home we had notes to buy more moving screens and more frames, as Mark had originally ordered enough frames for four growing hives. We also ordered something else, but I'm going to save that for another post!
Oh, I know what it is!
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