The three beehives are still alive. A few weeks ago common ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) was in flower. The tiny flowers, visible in the above photograph, produce an abundance of pollen, which the honeybees collected in large quantities. I always consider pollen collection to be a good indicator of hive health. Pollen only seems to be collected when there are bee eggs and larva and bee eggs mean that the queen is alive and healthy.
An image of a honeybee returning to the hive with yellow pollen packed into structures on its hind legs called "bee baskets."
When a foraging worker bee returns to the hive with a load of pollen she places it into an empty cell in the wax comb and then returns to foraging.
Cells filled with orange colored beebread are concentrated in the upper right corner of this photograph. The color of beebread can vary greatly depending on the type of pollen used as well as the specific molds and bacteria that are fermenting the bread. Also visible are capped brood cells (center) and newly laid bee eggs (lower left).
Other worker bees mix the pollen with honey and pack the mixture down into the cell and
then add more pollen and honey until the cell is mostly filled with the
dense mixture. This is then left alone and allowed to ferment into
something called beebread, which is critical for feeding bee larva.
Currently, based on observed pollen collection and bee activity, I would say that hives 1 and 4 are both very strong and hive three is nearly extinct. In my previous bee update I mentioned the discovery that hive 3 had somehow lost its queen, but still had a pretty strong population of worker bees. In an effort to save that hive and allow the bees to raise a new queen, I transferred a comb filled with newly laid bee eggs from hive 4 to hive 3. Now, more than a month later, it appears that this action was ineffective. The hive has dwindled in population and there is no evidence of any foraging activity. In fact, until I examined the beehives with the thermal imager last night (see below), I had assumed hive 3 had died out completely.
In the above nighttime thermal video the entrances of top bar beehives 4 (foreground) and 3 (background). Aside from the warm bodies (black is hot in this video) of a few bees wandering in an out of the hive, heat can also be seen radiating through the upper entrance holes of hive 4. Hive 3 is much cooler, but there are still at least two bees living there.
