Last Minute Checking

This is probably the last chance I'm going to get to check in on the bees this season. It's probably going to start getting chilly, it's barely reaching the mid 60s in the afternoon. If it gets much colder, it would be risky to open the hives.

I wanted to checkin on the yellow hive after my robbing disaster last month. Looks like the queen is still alive and well! I can't believe I found her again, I can rarely spot my unmarked queens. I usually have to look for other evidence that they are well (looking for eggs and young larve). Here is the yellow hive queen:

Though I found the queen, I also saw that the yellow hive has nearly cleared out their honey stash already! Rather than bringing in nectar, they seem to have just been eating the frames of honey I gave them last month. I was able to clear out 10 empty frames and reduce the hive to only two hive bodies. I also put on a feeder to try to help them through the winter... it's not looking good for this hive.

Even though the bees don't seem to be bringing in much nectar, there is certainly a lot of pollen is still coming in, check out this great shot of the bees carrying pollen:

While checking in on the hives, I found this ridiculous frame of honey! I must have forgotten to put foundation on a frame next to this one, because the bees just kept building it up. I have no idea how I'm going to harvest this: