Saturday, June 30, 2012

2012-06-23: A Super Addition to the Team!

 I added suppers to Orange, Purple, and Green since I was concerned about swarming (especially the first two).  I dusted most of the hives with powdered sugar to hopefully keep the mites in check.  Red is still subpar.

I had to remove some burr comb from Green and Swarm.  Melting comb on a hot bagel is pretty tasty!

 

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

2012-06-07: Swarming Around









At around 7PM I recieved a call from my father telling me that he had spotted what looked like a swarm of bees in the pasture.  I arrived around sunset to see a swarm had indeed settled on an old plow.  I set up a spare deep box with drawn comb and a feeder with some sugar syrup.  Then, with most of my family gathered to watch from a not entirely safe distance, I spritzed the swarm to keep them from flying and started to transfer them to the box in the hope that I would successfully get the queen.  At first I was brushing them into grain scoops placed underneath, but after a while I just started to sweep up handfulls of bees in my hands.

They appeared to be somewhat agreeable with their new digs.  But I could not tell as it was dark and they would not likely fly away even if they hated it.




Saturday, June 2, 2012

2012-05-27: Six is Company

My plan as I arrived was to inspect Blue (to remove the drone frames that I suspected were in it) and Red (which was not as strong as I would like and I was curious as to if it had brood), add frames to Green since I had not filled the second box all of the way, and get a top cover onto to Orange.

The hive entrance observations are as follows:
Orange:  27 foragers/min, No pollen
Purple: 22 foragers/min, No pollen
Green: 39 foragers/min, About half had pollen, foragers only using the top entrances
Blue: 70 foragers/min, About a quater had pollen, foragers only using the bottom entrance.
Red: 6 foragers/min, No pollen
Yellow: 16 foragers/min, No pollen

I noticed that Purple was not set properly on its bottom board and that there was a gap in the back through which foragers were entering and leaving.  Not wanting to leave a second entrance open that the bees would have to guard, I started to move it back into place when several dozen bees poured out.  I decided to leave them at that point since it was not worth getting the hive in a tizzy or smoking them up.

I swapped the top covers of Blue and Green in order to get the green cover back on Green.  I added three undrawn frames into Green to fill its second box.  The inner cover had comb on it ( as a consequence of have a spacer in during hte winter for feeding patties and sugar) which I decided to leave since there were some brood.  I figure that they will leave soon and I can remove it then.

There were some workers in the super on top of Blue and I did notice that workers were squeezing through the queen excluder.  The top deep was mostly drawn comb that was being filled with honey.  The second box had 2 drone frames (with drones in various states including some capped which were hatching as I watched) which I removed (and later froze).  I checked a few other frames to find worker brood.  I did not look at the bottom deep.

While working on Blue I turned to look at Green and saw a large cloud of bees in front of it.  When I had swapped tops I had settled the top cover on snuggly on Green and had blocked one of the top entrances.  I tilted it back and the foragers could then get in easier and the cloud disipated.

I did not look into Red afterall.
The hives as I arrived.


Orange and Purple hives which were from the new nucs showing some activity.
 


Blue and Red with a good amount of activity from the former and not so much from the later.