Goldenrod in bloom

Goldenrod is in bloom providing some pollen and nectar forage for the bees -- the fall honey flow that helps them build up their stores for winter.

Here's a bee working the goldenrod near the hives.

I just inspected the North hive this day.  Though I intended the bees to use the three bottom boxes for raising their brood, this hive as always extended its brood into the fourth box (counting from the bottom up).  This frame from the fourth box shows a lot of brood.  My intent this date was to reduce the size of the hive as it had six boxes total.  I pulled out the frames that had little or no nectar in them, though I had to take frames from the top two boxes to do so.  The empty hive box is sitting in the background here on my new hive stand that is not yet in use.  I did have a nucleus hive on that stand earlier in the year but it died out apparently due to not producing a viable queen.

This frame has both capped and uncapped brood in it, showing that I seem to have a producing queen.

This frame was covered with bees and when I nudged some out of the way, I could see that they were covering some uncapped brood.

This frame from the third box shows some capped brood as well as some drone comb on the bottom of the frame  (on the right in the picture).  The bees typically will cut back on drone production late in the year and I was little surprised to see how much drone this hive was still producing.

Another frame from the third box shows a lot of capped brood.

This frame had a lot of honey on it and an odd structure in the middle with what appears to be drone comb.  I don't know why the bees built the frame out this way.

After the inspection there remained a lot of agitated bees on the outside of the hive.  These bees seem a bit more aggressive than earlier in the season and I suspect that the requeening with swarming in the Spring brought in some more aggressive genetics into the hive.  Bees are more defensive in the fall too, with fewer sources of nectar and a need to protect their honey stores, and that might explain part of their aggressiveness too.  I had a guard bee follow me all the way to my car and I had to walk down a road a bit to shake her off before taking off my protective gear.