Well, I haven’t been as good at posting as I had hoped. The bees did well over the winter. My weak hive is now my strong hive, which makes my strong hive my weak hive. I have noticed that the bees in the (now) weak hive don’t seem to like to build on the black foundation that is in the hive. They had just gotten started well on a black frame when they went kind of nuts and started building what I can only describe as bur comb off of some of the already built cells.
About 5 weeks ago, I put a shallow super on hive number 1 (new strong) and they filled it to 80% in a little over 4 weeks. This was with a queen excluder on. You can tell that we are in the main flow. The comb that the built is almost pure white and the honey is extremly light in color. I just added a medium on top of the shallow this week. I did not have any mid-depth frames when they needed it; that’s why I put the shallow on first. The weak hive (#2) is responding very slowly this spring. I have a mid depth super on it and I will check in a few days to see if they have moved above the excluder and into the super.
March 15th, 2010 at 11:57 pm
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