Top Bar Beekeeping in Arlington Heights

Across all brood combs now, but can hardly stand back there with the mosquitoes!

I went deeper in yesterday, and pulled four more honey bars, leaving four. From what I saw, the bottoms of some of the bars I pulled had bubbly nectar, so it was fermenting, and dripping on the bottom board, so that was almost for sure the cause of the wetness. The dead bees in the brood area were dry, mainly a top layer of darker bee material, and underneath, grayish decomposing bee bodies.  I swept out a bunch of it but did not go all the way to the front of the hive.  I am still chicken to want to mess with the area where the queen is. Definitely saw capped brood, so it would seem the queen is still there. So in the end, last fall I had 11 bars of capped honey.  Took one in Sept, leaving 10.  Took 6 this past week, leaving 4.  What did they eat???? Removed entrance reducer.

Posted of FB Top Bar Site Spring Harvest, 2nd spring questions and comments: 1) See the pics, please. A few areas of mold and entombed bees on the honey bars. I simply cut those areas off and harvested. The honey was otherwise perfectly fine. Is this typical to find after winter? 2) Bottom board under honey bars had a good amount of dead, fermenting bees (pic in the plastic container). I scraped as much out as I could. I assume this is from nectar they weren't fast enough to cap or dry out last  fall and is (or is not?) normal? I do recall some times early this spring seeing liquid seeping out from the bottom of the hive, which was too thin to be honey. 3) Tons of dead bees in the brood area on the bottom board, seemingly mainly dry, or at least not fermenting. I did not remove these. I assume (?) that as the bees build up strength they'll dedicate more time to cleaning these up? Should I have helped them out? 4) I had about 10-12 bars of honey going into winter. ...