Checking carefully...

So with the honey harvest in the main job for the rest of the bee keeping season is to make sure the bees are healthy enough and well fed enough to make it through the winter.

So first things first...today's main job is to go through all 4 hives and check for signs of disease...

It doesn't get off to a good start.
One of the key signs of a healthy queen is that she lays in patterns of concentric circles...so there are no gaps.. a patchy or pepper pot laying pattern....so this frame...

Is not a good thing...

And neither is a pile of chalky bodies on the floor of the hive...

Unfortunately Chalkbrood  has no cure - I'm just going to have to let the bees sort this one out for themselves.  :(

The good news is that in the next hive there are baby bees hatching...

Gotta love those little furry heads poking out...

Its a much more encouraging site than looking a little corpses that have died in their cells and are now waiting for the undertaker bees to come and throw them out...

But this is even worse....this one seems to have not turned to be head up top ...so its dead butt is there for all to see ...this may be a virus called "chinese slipper" - will have to send this picture to the apiary disease expert for a second opinion...

And then ...just when I thought it couldn't get much yukkier... an old friend showed up... 

I LOATH Wax moth grubs.!!!

They are simply the... nastiest....SliMiEsT......GREASIEST critters.

I totally understand that in the wild they evolved to eat all the bits of wax that naturally fall from honeycomb, so would be doing a favour by cleaning the place up.  

But in a bee hive they decimate wax and kill the larva growing in the cells so I will mourn, however briefly, this valiant worker bee who sacrificed herself killing this one and ensuring it never made it into the hive.