10-30-2011 Hive check

No time for pictures today.  Dad drove me down to check the hive and plant mom's birthday present (a 3-in-1 apple tree).  The goal for today was to check the hive, add a mouse screen (which ended up being just the entrance reducer), and add some sugar syrup feed.   After opening the hive, two things were immediately apparent.  First, the top box was absolutely full of honey (and stored sugar syrup).  Just about every frame was very full and lots of the frames were capped off.  The second obvious thing is that eggs, larvae, and brood were almost non-existent.  I spent some time looking for the queen, but since there are still LOTS of bees in the hive, I had too much trouble locating her.  Hopefully she's in there and just shutting down egg laying for the winter.  I went through both boxes so I had a chance to lift the top box and it was very heavy.  I looked through the bottom box and saw several drones, but didn't locate the queen.  There were only a couple cells that looked like larvae and maybe one or two that looked like capped brood.  There was quite a bit of honey in the bottom box.... So this might just be the bees getting ready for the cold months ahead.  Actually last night got down close to freezing, so the bees may have better intuition about weather than I gave them credit for.  I'll probably be revisiting the hive to remove the feeder and install some ventilation hardware next time.