I kept getting advice from other beekeepers that I should be adding supers. When I ordered bees I bought three basic hives, which are a deep hive body, and inner cover, a lid, and a base. I’ve had my first two nucs since April 16. I’ve fed them 50/50 sugar water everyday, but we’ve only had 5 or so days of decent weather. I opened both the Connie and the Ethel hives after 10 days and Connie was doing better, but both had drawn comb on three of the new frames.
Yesterday my case of Pierco frames arrived (after two weeks). I painted five medium supers over the weekend, but I decided to only add one super to Connie and Ethel. My new hive, Martha, is still recovering from the trip down and needs to rest and get established before I start opening her up.
I filled a spray gun with sugar syrup and sprayed the frames. The frames are coated with beeswax, but I have heard that some hives don’t like them. Spraying the frames with sugar is supposed to make them more attractive to the workers and as they eat up the sugar they get used to them and will more readily draw comb.
I put on my bee hat and gloves and smoked Connie. I pulled a few frames and discovered that all the frames were drawn out and there was comb on the bottom of the top feeder. I added the super just in time to prevent a swarm. The supers were a little warped so there is a 1/16 inch gap that the bees did not seem to like. I took off the top feeder and I put on the inner lid and the telescoping top. I have a queen excluder, but I did not use it, yet. The bottom deep and the medium super are for the queen and I won’t harvest them for honey. When I add more supers I will put in the queen excluder. I hope to leave the deep and two supers for overwintering, but if there is any honey this summer I would like to harvest it and have something to show for all this time and expense.
I smoked Ethel and when I opened her up she had two frames without any comb. There were lots of bees, but I did not start pulling the frames. I did not inspect for brood. The one frame that I pulled seemed to have the high white caps which indicates brood, but the hive seemed upset and I wanted to get out quickly. I am wondering if the queen is OK. There is little I can do if she is not. I don’t want to order a queen just yet, that’s why I have three hives. I will let nature take its course for now. This hive takes the most sugar, so I wonder where it is going. The bottom of the plastic top feeder had a large build up of comb and the spaces where the bees climb up into the feeder had comb. Ethel never used the top feeder, just the front feeder. I pulled the top feeder off and had trouble getting the bees to exit the nooks and crannies. I went back and got the bee brush and carefully brushed most of them out onto the front stoop, and I left the feeder leaning against the hive. When I can back they had abandoned the feeder. I put the super and lids on Ethel.
If there is a problem with Ethel and the hive dies, I will wait until this summer and perhaps split Connie and get a new queen. Otherwise I will wait until spring and do the split then and late the bees make their own queen.
I now have two LARGE front feeders that I can fill with two quarts of sugar water each. I only filled each half full and when I came back there was a feeding frenzy going on in both hives. The medium feeder is on the new Martha hive and was about half empty last night. I will fill it today when I get home. I think I like the medium feeders better as they are easier to work with, even if I have to fill them every day.
At around 7:30pm last night, it was about 60 degrees and the wind had died down. I saw that there were lots of bees returning to all three hives with baskets full of pollen. I think this is a good sign. The new hive naturally has fewer workers, partly because I closed up the nuc while the force was still out gathering. I am hoping that the new brood keeps on hatching and that they turn the sugar into comb so that the population jumps up as fast as the Connie hive.
