We went into the hives today looking for brood and comb. All four hives are still alive, although they're not as strong as I'd hoped they would be. A late start and cool weather I think is the cause. But they say the flow has been spectacular this year, so I was hoping they would have drawn more comb than they have.
I had 20 frames of mostly capped honey in a freezer since last year. We thawed them out last night and I put a super on each hive today. The second brood boxes weren't drawn out as much as I would have liked them to be, so I guess now if you were to look in to the hive, you'd think they were bottom supered. There's a brood box on bottom, a partially filled brood box next, then a super with comb and partially combed honey. I'm hoping that the bees will be drawn up to the top super, so that will encourage them to draw out the middle box. I think one of the reasons they haven't drawn out the second brood box was they lacked incentive. Perhaps now they have that.
So I'll give them a week or so then look in and see how they're doing.
One of the package hives wasn't doing too good, and I didn't see many eggs or brood. So i took a frame of eggs and brood from the 10-frame hive and put it in the weak hive. Hopefully this will bolster the hive, and if they've lost the queen, there will be eggs to make a new one.
Didn't see any SHBs. Saw a couple of mites on drone larvae between levels in the frames, but it didn't seem too bad. I'll probably treat this fall after removing all supers. If it will keep raining, things will keep blooming and hopefully there will be some honey later.
I got some wooden frames at the Co-op today. We'll need to put them together so that we can have a place to ut the comb when we get into that swarm rap. I hope to get to that sometime this weekend or next week. That will give me five hives.
Be well!
No comments:
Post a Comment