I checked up on both of my Gainesville hives today. I've got good news and less good news.
Pink hive - as of my last inspection, four weeks ago, this hive appeared to be making a come back. Overall the population is up. They still have capped honey stores and plenty of food. There remains a fair amount of capped brood and even some nice, fat larvae that are yet to be capped. The thing that concerns me is that I didn't see any eggs or really young larvae. I also didn't see the queen, but that doesn't mean much. Now, I did this inspection before the sun was well up in the sky, so perhaps I just didn't have the right lighting conditions to see eggs and small larvae... though I did observe what appeared to be a capped queen cell in among some drone brood on the bottom side of one of the frames in the medium super. Additionally this hive seemed a little "buzzy" and I've heard from experienced bee keepers that over time you get to where you can detect a queen-less hive based on its sound. So maybe that's what I'm hearing, or maybe this is just my own weird confirmation bias :)
Plan: I'll give them two weeks and if they're not clearly back on track I'll give them a frame of brood from my hill hive.
Hill hive - This hive is still going awesome. They've not only pulled comb in more than half of the honey super, but they've actually started storing honey in there! This means they're pulling nectar in from the environs and doing very well at it. I'm extremely optimistic that I'll be able to harvest some honey this fall.
As for the rest of the hive, it's boiling with bees. They still have plenty of capped honey and wall-to-wall brood on a number of the medium frames in the upper portion of the brood box. If anything my only concern is that this hive is getting overpopulated and may swarm, but I saw no indications of swarm cells. So hopefully they'll stay put.
Plan: next inspection I should be prepared for two things- 1) there's a chance these bees will take another honey super this fall and 2) I need to bring a couple deep, small-cell frames as this hive is ready to start having the large cell stuff removed.
Last note: both of my Gville hives have lots of beetles. The beetle traps seem to help, but I'd really like to get ahead of the population. I think I'll try nematoads again (I'll be quicker with spreading them this time, last time I think most of them died in my fridge)
Saturday, September 15, 2012
9/15 - Always playing catch-up with the blog
Again I've missed a couple posts, so I'll try to dump what I can recall and then I'll cover today's G'ville hive inspections in a separate post.
Back on 8/17 I made a trip up to Dadant in High Springs to pick up some equipment and supplies. Also I wanted to ask advice on a problem that's been developing w/ one of John's hives out in Interlachen. He's got a hive that seems to have a small colony living UNDER the screen bottom board of the larger hive. This hasn't been a big deal, but they've begun pulling comb down there, so we need to intervene.
8/18, I did a quick inspection of my pink hive - this is the one with the newly minted queen. This hive had good brood pattern (better than two weeks prior) and still lots of capped honey. My impression is that they were making a come back. Still a fair number of beetles. So I introduced a couple new beetle traps with some rotten old banana to see if that will help attract the beetles.
8/19, went to Interlachen. John and I swapped the screen bottom board out of the white hive with the population setting up under the screen. This allowed up to flip the affected sbb on its side and cut off the comb. Don't see any signs of a queen down there, so its unlikely they have a queen. We kept as many of the bottom-side bees as possible and got them into a medium on a new bottom board. We gave them some empty frames, and cut out some foundation from the middle two frames and grafted in their comb from under the old hive. We also gave them one medium brood frame from his pastel hive, thinking this would give them a chance to rear a queen if they care to. Then John put some feed on this hive to see if we could get them to set up shop... within a few days it was clear that they had abandoned their new home in favor of, surprise, the bottom board of his white hive. *sigh*
Aside from the failed transplant of the under-hive bees, the two hives seem to be doing well. We spotted both queens and I was generally please with the condition of both hives. The pastel hive seemed a little light on overall population, but there was some nice brood so hopefully they're on the mend. Otherwise, both hives were depleted of any capped honey, so John is going to go back to feeding them.
8/25, did a full inspection of my hill hive. It's doing very well - tons of bees, plenty of good brood and eggs, plenty of capped food and pollen. Also they're actively pulling comb in the honey super I gave them.
Back on 8/17 I made a trip up to Dadant in High Springs to pick up some equipment and supplies. Also I wanted to ask advice on a problem that's been developing w/ one of John's hives out in Interlachen. He's got a hive that seems to have a small colony living UNDER the screen bottom board of the larger hive. This hasn't been a big deal, but they've begun pulling comb down there, so we need to intervene.
8/18, I did a quick inspection of my pink hive - this is the one with the newly minted queen. This hive had good brood pattern (better than two weeks prior) and still lots of capped honey. My impression is that they were making a come back. Still a fair number of beetles. So I introduced a couple new beetle traps with some rotten old banana to see if that will help attract the beetles.
8/19, went to Interlachen. John and I swapped the screen bottom board out of the white hive with the population setting up under the screen. This allowed up to flip the affected sbb on its side and cut off the comb. Don't see any signs of a queen down there, so its unlikely they have a queen. We kept as many of the bottom-side bees as possible and got them into a medium on a new bottom board. We gave them some empty frames, and cut out some foundation from the middle two frames and grafted in their comb from under the old hive. We also gave them one medium brood frame from his pastel hive, thinking this would give them a chance to rear a queen if they care to. Then John put some feed on this hive to see if we could get them to set up shop... within a few days it was clear that they had abandoned their new home in favor of, surprise, the bottom board of his white hive. *sigh*
Aside from the failed transplant of the under-hive bees, the two hives seem to be doing well. We spotted both queens and I was generally please with the condition of both hives. The pastel hive seemed a little light on overall population, but there was some nice brood so hopefully they're on the mend. Otherwise, both hives were depleted of any capped honey, so John is going to go back to feeding them.
8/25, did a full inspection of my hill hive. It's doing very well - tons of bees, plenty of good brood and eggs, plenty of capped food and pollen. Also they're actively pulling comb in the honey super I gave them.
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