Bees are coming early this Friday morning by truck to the Palisades Mall.
I painted the hive boxes over the weekend and set up the empty hives in the old Ethel location. I decided to make them a side-by-side apiary style setup. I see this in the websites where all the hives are together and facing the same way. Originally, I wanted to keep my hives segregated. I had the idea that the less interaction they had, the better they would be as far as sharing disease, etc. I am less sure now that it makes a difference and it may be that the bees share their population between two queens this way. The hives will be identical, so bees might return to the wrong hive and not even care since they are so close together.
Martha, the weaker hive, was nice and active. I fed her early last week and yesterday she was almost done with the half gallon .
Connie is amazingly active with a cloud of bees in front of the hive. I fed her yesterday with a half a gallon, although I am not sure that she needs it. Connie and Martha have lots of returning bees with yellow, orange and red pollen.
Both hives were flying about and bumping me, and when I opened the top they starting coming out and landing on my face and hands. I was not stung, but I am not comfortable with the situation so I closed them as soon as I could. I was not wearing anything special. I sometimes wear a panama hat when I open the hives to keep bees out of my hair, but I broke all the rules yesterday and wore dark clothes, and that and my dark hair challenged the bees.
Tonight, if I have time, I will put on the bee suit and do a proper inspection.
I want to verify that Martha is laying brood and has a queen, if I can find it.
I want to see how full Connie is. I have not been able to take off the mini super that I used for baggie feeding over the winter. Each time I open the top there are too many bees swirling around to do more than close her right up again.
I need to take Connie apart and see she is doing for honey and brood. If there is too much honey in the bottom deep I will take out the honey at the edges, move the frames over to make room in the center and try swapping in some empty frames in the middle. If she is “honey bound”, so full of honey that the queen has no room for eggs, then she will start making swarm cells. I want to hold Connie off from swarming a while. I need her to want to swarm in early May so I can split her then.
Connie has a medium super on her that I left from last year because it was full of capped honey. I was going to move it over to Martha, but when I opened the hive last Fall, they were all balled up in the super (I had neglected to put in the queen excluder). I would like to take that super off and put in a queen excluder. If the Super has brood (I don’t think this is likely) I will move her over to Martha. If it has capped honey, I will harvest it. If it empty or has uncapped honey and no brood, I’ll just put the super back, but over a queen excluder.
Last year I did not worry about being stung, but this year I am more skittish. I worry too much.
