Archive for April, 2012

Hive Inspection Day 5

Thursday, April 12th, 2012

I went out and opened all 9 hives this morning. The packages look good. Lots to bees and some new comb. I saw brood in all of them. That’s 5 new hives that are working. The queen boxes were empty and they looked like they had no trouble getting out.

One split seemed to be working well. The queen was released, and it was very active with lots of bees. I closed it up without checking for brood. Since there is nothing I can do if there is none, only time will tell.

The other split failed. The queen was dead in her cage and it looks like the bees went back to their original hive. This hive had not been taking syrup so I had already guessed it had gone bad.

The seven good hives have taken 10 gallons of syrup in these last 5 days and are ready for more. I have an extra top feeder now and I can put it on one of the splits. I suspect the racoons get any syrup left in the front feeders over night, because I find them scattered in the morning. You have to fill front feeders before noon.

The Morning After Installation

Monday, April 9th, 2012

I am worried about the bees. It is a bad day: sunny but very windy. The bees want to fly, but it they do they will blow away and probably die. The bees are all installed, but I am not sure they will all take. A good number of packages die due to a bad queen, or dissatisfaction with the hive.

I tried to use as much drawn comb as I could in the new hives, hoping the bees will see it as home. I had not frames of honey, though, like last year. A frame or two of honey will convince any queen that the new hive is a good place to live.

Right now the bees are gathering around the front and there is a lot of cleaning going on. I hope that they like their new homes and stay.

Here is a slide show of what the hives looked like this morning.

Easter Bees

Monday, April 9th, 2012

At about 1:15 AM Easter morning, Adam Fuller arrived with a truck load of bees from Georgia. I got 5 packages:

Billions and Billions of Bees.

Here are my 5 packages coming off the truck with a bunch of Beekeepers hanging around to pick up their bees.

5 packages, two queens installed.

Sunday, April 8th, 2012

I am done with the Spring installation. All the local Beekeepers met at the Mall at 1AM. Adam came with his truck. I bought two queens and five packages.

Yesterday I split my two hives. I could not find the queens, so I am guessing that she is with the brood that I found, so this morning I put the queens in the two boxes that I assume are the queenless hives. I hope I was right.

The 5 packages went smoothly and took about an hour this morning. I was not stung, although some riders manages to follow me into the house when I was done. I hope the bees are happy.

I have some pictures of the bee truck and maybe tonight I’ll post them.

 

Bees Come Tonight

Saturday, April 7th, 2012

I have heard from the guy who is trucking up the bees from Georgia. He arrives at the West Nyack Palisades Mall around midnight tonight. He will have 5 packages and 3 queens for me.

I will leave them in the truck overnight and at dawn I will install the packages.

Tonight I will split my two hives and in the morning give the two new hives a queen each.

The last queen will be installed with bees from each of the packages. I will dump the bees into the hives when I do the install, but leave a few in each box so the leftovers will serve to make an extra hive. This is an experiment and I am not sure it will work. Installing packages is iffy enough.