The School Beekeeper: Star stores

Yesterday (Friday) was the final day of the Star's Apiguard treatment, so I decided to combine the removal of the medication with an inspection of winter stores. Armed with three pupils (who proved to be competent photographers and record keepers, unlike the last batch, whose skills at the latter were dubious) and a walkie-talkie, we made out way to the hives.
The first little bit of excitement was when one of the pupils informed me he had a spider scuttling in front of his eyes - on the inside of his veil. Obviously, he couldn't take the veil off, so he resorted to that most primeval of human instincts and squashed the critter.
The wasp situation was bad. The trap was so full of wasps, they weren't able to drown in the water. I didn't want to change that with the pupils around, so left it like that for the moment.

Star stores

The star hive were a docile lot. There's a lot of bees in the hive, but not an excessive amount. The inspection was a real joy, actually, the bees keeping to themselves, not getting in the way - and none stinging! The only interruption to the calm lifting of the frames, checking, calling out amount of stores and replacing was the occasional wasp I couldn't help squishing in aid of my little workers.

The star queen with drone and workers

The star has quite a few stores, but not all short frames have comb on them (a result of my drone trapping). We saw the queen. You can see her on the photo with the yellow dot. The other seemingly huge bee on the photo is a drone, which is much larger than the worker bees. The colony is still rearing brood, as we saw a number of capped brood cells as well as larvae. So things are looking good in the Star, basically. Will have to do a varroa count to see if and how the medication worked.
Having checked the stores, I took out the super, which the bees, despite it being on the crown board, were not emptying (Moon and Star seem to have similar ideas about what is a part of the hive and what isn't) and placed it on the roof. Once again, not ideal, because of wasps &c, but that way the supers get cleared ready for storage.