We Have Orientation Flights..... Again!

Earlier in the summer I used to see huge swarms of bees in front of the hives doing orientation flights on a nearly daily basis. Since the hives have been having queen problems I haven't seen any orientation flights in quite some time. Yesterday however, I saw a small group of bees in front of the hives flying up and down and side to side at right angles. I saw the same thing again today. Even though there weren't a lot of bees orienting themselves to the hives' locations it was nice to see them at it again. I'm sure that the bees performing the flights were all from Georgia's queen. Virginia's queen is not old enough to have produced bees performing orientation flights yet. The bees in front of Virginia were from the frames of brood I moved over from Georgia to try to prevent any laying workers from developing.

I did go through the honey supers this afternoon. The bees are finally starting to draw a little comb in the newest supers with empty frames. Virginia has just a little less than 3 medium supers full of honey right now. Georgia has about the same, but remember that we extracted one of Georgia's supers earlier in the summer and put the empty super back on. The bees are continuing to move the honey out of the bottom super directly above the brood nest. Next time I do an inspection I will put the queen excluder back on so I can still extract those frames without worrying about brood getting in the way.