Well, last night as I was headed out to do errands, I noticed a lot of bees circling the entrance. A LOT of bees. I had to go right away, so I could not investigate too much, but what I saw I did not see any fighting or bees on the ground/etc. But I wondered what was going on. When I got back 2 hrs later, the # of bees was back to normal, the sun was going down and the hive was in shadows.
I just checked the hive, I have 4 mediums on it. I saw the queen in the 3rd and some closed brood cells in that box. The 2nd box had lots of bees and some brood. But the top/4th box was just mostly drawn comb. There used to be drone cells up there, but the workers cleaned up the cells after kicking the drones out. There are no capped cells at all.
I did not find any drones in the 3 boxes I looked at. I also did not find any capped honey cells. I found some cells with nectar in them in the 3rd box, but no capped honey, zip, zilch, zero.
They got raided. They have no honey stores. There was honey when I checked last. I've put in an entrance reducer after I closed up the hive.
Looks like I will be feeding them more than I expected.
Rats... Well, first year on a new hive is usually a bust anyways. At least they have a lot of bees.
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