Moving the Martha hive to a new location is harder than it seems. Bees memorize the location of the hive so that the workers who leave the moved hive return to the old location of the hive. I have been moving them back every night, but they don’t learn.
Martha, the hive that was trashed, may have lost the queen as it is behaving badly. The bees are acting upset and buzz me when I go near the hive. I do not know how long the frames were exposed to the weather and I am hoping that there were some viable eggs that might make it to queen.
I have been giving them sugar at the hive, and I have set up a community feeder. The rain here has been awful and the bees have not been able to get out and take advantage of the spring nectar flow. I think they are all doing poorly. I will not be getting any honey this summer, I think. Since I am feeding them this late in the season, the honey made from the sugar water will not be good.
I will have to smoke and open the Martha hive soon enough and see if there is any brood, but I don’t want to upset her, especially if they are making a queen. I have also bought some deep boxes and I want to put a deep box on the bottom of all of my hives. This way I can move the bees up to the second story and create more room for them. They can, if they want, move down slowly to the bottom box. This will make plenty of room for the summer and fall and I hope they will be able to collect enough honey in the two deeps to make it though the winter.
I have five medium supers that I have not put on the hives, but it since the weather is so bad it is not likely the bees would move into them. There are one or two supers on each hive and as of two weeks ago they had moved into lower one, but the top supers of all the hives were still empty.
I wish that things had gone better. I would have liked to have at least a jar or two of honey this year, but having the weather so bad and the vandalism, the bees will have to struggle just to live through the winter.
I ordered a hive kit when things were going better. I wanted to be prepared in case one of the hives swarmed. I don’t think that I will get to use it this year.
I found that there are a dozen or so beekeepers in Rockland and that they all know each other. This spring they collected at the Mall at 3 o’clock in the morning, and met a truck that drove up from Georgia with packages. Next year I may need to get several packages, so it is good I found out about this. I don’t know who coordinated this, but I am trying to find out.
