I checked on the Centennial hive yesterday. It's doing very well. There are only maybe a dozen bees still in the tree. I'm hoping in the next week, I can open the tree up, and let the hive rob out all the honey. If not, hopefully they'll be able to build up their stores quickly, so they have enough to make it through the winter. I think they should be okay, I'd just like to give them a little extra, just to be safe.
I added the first super to the hive, as both brood boxes were pretty much full. The top brood box had one frame at each end almost completely full of uncured nectar, so they should be capped off pretty soon now. With the goldenrod and aster flowing, I'm hoping it doesn't take them too long to fill everything up. I don't think I'm going to get any surplus out of this one, but we'll see.
A point of comparison: Since adding supers to the Yale hive, I haven't really spent much time handling frames with just brood, as most of those have a decent amount of honey across the top. It's amazing how much heavier the honey-filled frames are, compared to the brood frames! I was thinking something was wrong with the hive, they felt so light! But I saw young larvae in different stages of development, and a bunch of capped brood, so everything is good.
I'll be inspecting the Yale hive in the next day or two. I'll make sure to post an update when I finish. I'm going to try to get a pic of a full frame of honey. Hopefully, it will be ready for super #3!
No comments:
Post a Comment