It's spring! Cherry blossom honey!

Here's what I started the afternoon with. I only had medium super frames leftover from last year, so we tore out the side pieces and added longer sides to make large super frames. It's pretty time-consuming making all the hive components.

 Here's a good representation of the comb condition. Still has honey, but I didn't see any larva.

Both hives have quite low numbers. The winter wasn't especially cold, but their numbers were vastly decimated by hornet attacks in the fall. I was able to spot the queen bee for the first time, she the elongated one just right of center without black stripes.

Here's the current situation. The supers on the left has been checkered. That is alternating frames of comb with empty frames. The result should be orderly production of comb, hopefully without the burr comb I had last year. The super on top of the right hive isn't in use yet (there's a lid on the bottom super), but that will be checkered as well, as soon as the bees have cleared out the remaining wax worms and the bees have grown in number. In the August post, I tried to merge two hives (one was queenless), but it failed and the top supers were totally ignored by the bees in the bottom super. I believe that was the situation that allowed the wax worms to proliferate in the first place.

Here are a couple of wax moth cocoons and a wax worm emerging in the top image. I believe these were laid some time in the fall and just hatched this week. The super had a few small gaps in the corners and I imagine that was the original route in. There's something to be said for proper workmanship. I cleaned out all the cocoons and worms I could find. The bees will have to dispose of the rest, in fact the following day I saw a worker bee carrying out one of the ones I missed.