Monday, May 21, 2012
5-20-2012 Adding boxes
It wasn't a great day for beekeeping in Mathews... Overcast and somewhat windy, but the nucleus hive (hive C) was busting at the seams in their single deep hive body. Also, I was able to clean up hive B a bit. It seems like my fix is starting to take hold and although there are a couple frames that are still pretty messy, the bees are starting to fill out the other frames the way I was hoping they would. The biggest hive (hive A) is still taking their time moving into the honey super. I read on the internet about an Imrie shim. I added this shim just above the queen excluder in hopes of encouraging the bees into the honey super. Hopefully that will work!
Sunday, May 6, 2012
5-6-2012 Hive Check
Dad and I went down to Mathews today to check on the hives. The first hive looked ok, but there weren't any bees in the honey super and they hadn't drawn out any of the comb in the top box.... Also, there were a bunch of ants on the top cover board.... So we hit it with a bunch of cinnamon. Hopefully that will take care of the ants.
In the third hive (nucleus started) the bees have filled out a couple more frames, but are still well short of 8 full frames, so I decided not to add the second deep hive body.
On the second hive (started from a package back in April) I realized that letting the bees continue to build comb where they wanted was a colossal mistake. I had to essentially do a cut-out and try to salvage the comb with the most brood by attaching it to frames without comb and hope the bees will "build out" those bits of comb. As for the rest of the comb, I basically put the pieces into an empty deep hive body on top of the original box and filled it with newspaper to prevent them from adding anything else to those bits of comb. I'm feeling pretty bad about this one, but maybe they'll bounce back.
Note that the comb in these pictures are not in frames.... That's not a good thing.
They didn't start building on the frames as quickly as I'd hoped. They just kept building on this comb... and it's gotten to the point where I had to do something since I could barely get the top cover off. When I did, I broke a bunch of comb.
What a mess... Hopefully they'll make it despite my lousy beekeeping skills.
In the third hive (nucleus started) the bees have filled out a couple more frames, but are still well short of 8 full frames, so I decided not to add the second deep hive body.
On the second hive (started from a package back in April) I realized that letting the bees continue to build comb where they wanted was a colossal mistake. I had to essentially do a cut-out and try to salvage the comb with the most brood by attaching it to frames without comb and hope the bees will "build out" those bits of comb. As for the rest of the comb, I basically put the pieces into an empty deep hive body on top of the original box and filled it with newspaper to prevent them from adding anything else to those bits of comb. I'm feeling pretty bad about this one, but maybe they'll bounce back.
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