I'll admit I've got a bad habit of leaving my tools behind when I'm done looking at the bees. In the picture below, is one of my tools, just hanging around.



Yeah, It's my frame rest. It's been left out hanging from this convenient branch for the last few weeks. I use it each time, trying hard to remember to bring it back with me, but always forget.



I've made it a good habit to kneel next to the hives and watch for a few minutes before I open them up. It helps me to get an understanding of what's going on in the hive, before I even open them up.



For example, I can see if pollen is coming in, if they're wash-boarding, if they're transferring nectar to each other (indicating a nectar flow is on), if new bees are taking their orientation flights, if drones are being thrown out for the winter, etc.

Today the activity looked good for each hive. They were even bringing in pollen.

I wanted to open the white hive, to see how they were doing, since they accepted their new queen.

There were new eggs when I checked two weeks ago,  but today there were no capped brood. There were lots of eggs, and even some larvae, but no capped brood. So what happened to the eggs from two weeks ago? I marked a few frames where I saw eggs today, so that I could check on them in a week and see what is happening to them.

This hive is FULL of drones from the laying workers a month ago. It should be a neat sight to see when the girls kick all them drones out of the hive in a few weeks.

When I looked at the feeder to see if they needed more syrup, I figured out why they haven't been taking much lately. The 2:1 syrup had crystallized around the wire barrier.

I removed the staples and lifted the top screen to get a better look, and break the crystals.



Below is an even closer picture of the bees working around the crystallized sugar.



In case you're wondering, I did see the queen (below) of the white hive, but since I still don't see any capped brood, I still have my doubts this hive will make it through the winter.