live, love, travel, dream

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.

It’s been a month now for the bees to get used to their new digs.  They have adapted well.  The move from the NUC box to the hive body went well.  I gave them a week to get used to their new home and their environment before messing with them.  At that time, I fed them using the gallon zip-loc method.  I had a couple of shallow bodies that I stacked on top of the lower.  This gave me room to put the bag full of feed on top of the frames.  Having an engineering background, I understand the concept of surface tension of liquids.  It still doesn’t feel right to reach in and cut a slit in the top of the bag that is full of 5 pounds of sugar-water.   But, it does work, and it works well.

A couple of weeks ago, I shuffled the frames.  I took one of the empty outer frames and shifted it to the center of the frames.  This also worked well.  They had been slowly working their way from the middle frames toward the two ends.  This seemed to have kicked in some kind of instinct telling them jump on that frame and fill it.

Hive number 2 is still much stronger than number 1.  Number 1 hive might not catch up until next spring.  We’ll see.  It is almost time to put a second hive body on hive number 2.  It’s about 70% full.  I have a couple of mid depth bodies that I will put on as soon as I put together the frames.

The honey bees of course. After much anticipation, preparation, waiting, etc. I finally got THE call. “Your bees are ready for you to pick up”. I went down this evening and picked up two NUCS from Mike Sorensen. He runs a website at beeyondwonderful.com.

We (the bees and I) made the hour long trip back home arriving around midnight. Mike had warned me that the bees would be upset about the move from their old home to the new one here at the house. I was a little concerned that I would have a few thousand bees dancing around my head when I opened the box. I got fully suited up in the new Brazilian bee suit, that I got from Mike (Awesome suit, by the way), gloves, etc. I carried them down to the corner of the yard that I had prepared and sat them on top of the empty bottom board. Being that it was midnight, it was rather dark so I had the flashlight in my teeth, inside of the veil. Yes, I’m sure that it would have looked a bit ridiculous but, nobody was around to see. Then, the moment had come to cut the tape holding the opening shut. My apprehension seems a bit ridiculous looking back now but, Mike had warned me that they would be upset about the move and as nice as the new bee suit is, I’m 6′4″ tall and the legs didn’t quite make it down to meet my short boots that I was wearing. Anyway, I cut the tape on the first box and fold down the flap………. nothing. OK, didn’t expect that. I move over to the second box, cut the tape and fold down the flap. A dozen bees came crawling out and started walking around on the outside of the box. Nobody flying, still no bees coming out of the first box. This is where I start feeling a bit foolish about the anxiety of opening the boxes. I’m sure it would have been much different if it had not been midnight and/or been warmer outside. A couple of bees eventually started crawling around on the first box and if I shone the flashlight inside, I could see several of the girls walking around on the bottoms of the frames.

Tomorrow (actually, later today as it’s almost 1:00am), they get to move from their cardboard box to the real hive.

Richard