Not a whole lot to report today. Maddie and I have just finished our hive inspection. Things are progressing well. We have two supers on, the top one is drawn out, and mostly capped (about 4 or 5 fully capped frames, and probably half of the other two are full, just not capped). The bottom super was just put on last week, and the bees are starting to fill it already. LOTS of bees in the box. I actually had a hard time working in the top brood chamber, because it was so crowded. I'm tempted to just leave them to their own devices for the rest of the summer, and just check the supers. I'm afraid I may roll the queen, and either kill her or damage her enough that the bees decide to replace her. It's getting awful late in the season to try requeening.
The tree hive is coming along. I think in the next week or two, I may be able to open it up and let them clean out the tree... I just want to make sure the tree is empty of bees first. There was about 100-150 bees on the screen this last week when I checked (compared to literally several hundred when I started), so I'm thinking they should be just about moved out.....Gonna check the box early next week to see how it's coming along.
The swarm we took a couple weeks ago is doing excellent, according to Brad. He says they are drawing out comb like crazy, and the queen was laying within the first week. It looks like it may have been a good call to try catching that one. I don't think we'll bother with any others this year though, it's getting pretty late, and they won't have time to collect stores and grow their numbers before winter sets in.
Well, next week, I'll look into the tree hive, and I'll update everyone when I'm done.
Had a few spare mins so thought I would check out how the bees were doing. Sorry you lost both hives and good luck when starting over.
ReplyDeleteLater, Grams