Hive status: SJ and MH

Inspected the hives yesterday/today.

The MH hive is strong, lots of bees. I removed 4 super frames and consolidated the 2 supers into 1 super with the remaining partially drawn frames. The 2nd deep has lots of bees in it and capped brood cells in the middle of the deep with 2 frames of honey on each side. Looks good.

The SJ hive is kaputt. I checked it yesterday, the supers were only partially drawn/capped. The top deep was full of honey and there were very few bees in the top deep/supers. Looks like they had a late season swarm. The population seemed to be very low from what I saw going in/oiut and in the top deep/supers. The frames in the top deep were attached to the sides/bottom deep with lots of bur comb. In removing the frames for inspection, I tore open quite a bit of honeycomb. That was a mistake in robbing season.

Today when I came back to the hive to remove the supers, Fuzzy and I saw a cloud of bees all around my hive. They were at the seams between the supers trying to get in, they were bombarding the entrance, the hive was being robbed.

I decided to put the partially drawn supers on Fuzzy's hive next to mine to see if his bees cap off the honey. I removed the top deep and put it in a box to extract it tonight. I put an entrance reducer in the hive to try to help any of my bees who might be left (slim chance).

Fuzzy just sent me this email:
About 6:30pm, (sunset), I suited up and went over and popped the top and innercover on your hive. I figured that most of the raiders would happily head for their respective homes. Sure enough there was an immediate cloud of bees exiting.

Went back (suitless) at 8pm in the dark with a flashlight. It appears that there are now fewer than 100 bees left inside the hive. So I put the cover(s) back on and sealed it up.

Looks like I helped kill my hive. Darn!
The picture above is of the robbers.