Decided to leave the top box in place for now.
Today by mid afternoon there was a lot more activety around the hive, with a cloud of bees coming and going - a welcome sight after the heatwave during July that made the bees a bit lethargic, followed by rain and storms earlier in August that stopped all but the most hardy foragers from taking off.
Whilst I had the hive open, I lifted off the top box to have a look inside the main body of the hive. It's very busy in there - all frames covered in bees, crammed full with honey stores as well as brood.
As you can see, the anti-Asian Hornet cage is still in place.
And, I managed to get a photo of an Asian Hornet , hovereing outside the cage, where they try to catch bees returning to the hive - If left undisturbed they will carry a bee to a nearby support, pull off the bees wings, legs and head, then carry the body back to their nest to feed their young. Most days I manage to get two or three hornets with the badminton racket (very satisfying - to be recommended if you have anger management issues) ) and we also have 3 traps in the garden. Know I have given out the recipe before, but just in case any of you are wondering, the best trap mix seems to be equal measures of brown beer, white wine & blackcurrant syrup.
If you put out traps now, hopefully they could entice young hornet queens leaving their nests to mate and survive alone over next winter- and if we can catch those, it would stop the explosion of colonies before next summer.