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Inspect Frames for Honey and Brood

5:01
13:22
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Honey Bees: How I prepare My Bees for Winter

What happens here

Using the hive tool, gently pry up and separate the frames from each other and the hive walls. Lift each frame individually, inspecting both sides for capped honey, pollen, and brood (larvae and capped cells). A strong hive for winter should have ample capped honey, indicating sufficient food stores. Look for a solid, compact brood pattern, which suggests a healthy queen. Also, check for any signs of pests or diseases, such as wax moth larvae or webbing, or discolored/sunken brood.

Goal: Carefully remove and inspect individual frames to assess honey stores, brood patterns, and overall hive health for winter preparation.

Tools and materials

  • Bee Smoker
  • Hive Tool

What they say

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can tell so we're gonna see what's going on here in the hive for the fall what I want to see here and the top of the hive is a lot of honey so we've taken the hive tool here and broken loose this frame and we're gonna slide it out see if we've got honey maybe a little bit of brood up here but mainly honey it appears to be stuck in pretty good so that means I've got a lot of Berk home down in the bottom but we're loaded down with delicious honey and that's what we want looking down in the hive it looks healthy I am NOT going to disturb this hive any further so now that we've checked inside the hive I'm gonna clean up a little bit on the top I'm gonna give them a high of a little lift get myself a guesstimate of how heavy it is it's probably at about a hundred and fifteen pounds ten frame hive one two three four five six seven eight nine ten should weigh about sixty pounds per super full of honey so we should be totally good here we may crack down into one one one layer down so at this point we're one super down from where we were before I'm gonna take a frame out in the center here and see if we have any brood so I've got my frame out and I'm seeing brood here okay so it looks pretty good a little patchy wouldn't expect it to be amazing this time of year don't see my queen and I don't see any fresh eggs we're gonna close it up and call it good so at this point we're gonna put our

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