went through my wellington backyard hive today - i added a couple of boxes just before christmas, one 3/4 drawn frames, one full depth undrawn. Since then there has been a lot of hot dry weather to complement the pohutukawa flow. Didn't have a box ready to add at the time, will add one or two tomorrow - should be just one, to avoid breaking my made today rule about not stacking higher than seven full depth equivalent boxes high, but will probably go with two. Inspecting a friend's back from the dead last autumn hive and the two community garden hives i manage tomorrow - expecting similar issues, although already broke that rule on one of the community garden hives, honey pull for those ones end january for extraction and sale early february.
Taranaki hives pumping, first honey pull done and hopefully enough space for the next little while. I think i posted previously in October that my five there had become four due to a starvation failure, and five again after a split? Pic attached of how i left them after some days of spraying and ragwort pulling (and fishing) just gone. The observant among you might notice six stacks, the one at the back is spares, in the meantime functioning as a swarm soak in the unlikely event of a swarm. The incredibly observant among you might notice a trace of red/pink dye on the rushes to the right of frame - i'd sprayed it a couple of days earlier, along with another eight knapsacks worth of spraying that day...
And lastly, after the honey pull i'll finally be getting rid of the last couple of hives at my place in dunedin soon - they've handled remote management well enough and it has been fun to prove that hives can be managed on some sites on five visits a year, but now time to move out along with the friend who has been living there the last while most of the time since i moved to wellington.