Bees don't go on holiday...

On 17th July I came back from my holiday one day later than intended, thanks to TAP's excellent organisational and aviation skills and immediately went into the hives. I literally dropped the luggage off at my house and then drove on to school to check up on how my bees had been doing.

Moon hive was bursting full. The feeder was empty, but the bees had started to build wild comb in the empty super. There's a little entrance hole from the brood box to the super for ventilation or whatever and the bees, obviously feeling cramped in the brood chamber had flown through this and started building their own comb there.

That told me I had to add frames to the super and stop feeding them.

Once again I removed the wild comb and then had hands covered in honey. While this meant I constantly had bees licking at me and my gloves, it also meant that I did not get stung. Perhaps that's a way to go in future? Always make sure I'm covered in honey when I do my hive inspections?

The Moon colony itself was great: all frames drawn out, the outer ones heavy with stores and on the inside ones a beautiful laying pattern. I have a queen that does not like to lay on wire, so where the wire runs in the foundation there tends to be no brood.
The bees seem to like sticking the 'wild comb' at the bottom of the half frames to the side of the hive. So some comb will always rip, but until I get rid of those, I guess that's what will happen.

The Star colony is also doing very well. It's not quite as strong as the Moon, but almost there. Once again the bees here were slightly more aggressive and I constantly had two to three bees circling my head like satellites with a slightly more high-pitched buzz.
My little attempt at engineering the 'wild comb' worked. The add-on comb at the bottom is now straight, sandwiched as it is between the 12x14 frames.

As I had, very stupidly, not made up the super frames, I decided to return to school the nest day (as it was getting late) and make the frames and put the supers on the next day.

Used frame holders for the inspection, which I find invaluable when working on my own. As the first frame tends to be stores only, I pop that on the holder and can then move around the hive more freely. This is particularly important as there are sooooo many bees! I am in constant fear of squashing them and often enough cannot pick up frames as quickly as I want to as they are crawling all over the lugs, or handles, of the frames.