I have been nervous about checking the bees since I was stung so often the last few times that I opened the top feeder to add sugar syrup. I dug out my pair of size 13 Frye boots and put on my bee suit.
I set the smoker up with a little newspaper to get it started and lots of Pine straw. Pine straw is great for smoking. It is the dried pine needles under my White Pines. I should package the stuff and sell it to beekeepers. It smokes like crazy and the bees seem to hate the acrid smell.
I smoked up my suit to keep the bees off me. This is a trick I learned from talking to an old beekeeper on the phone last summer. It really works.
I pulled off the lid of Martha and gave her some smoke and waited a few seconds. I then took off the lid and smoked under the inner lid and then lifted the top feeder and gave her some more smoke. I was worried that I was smoking her too much so I stopped then.
When I lifted the top feeder there was bridge comb that held the top to a couple of frames that wanted to lift up with the top.
I put the top deep on Martha towards the middle of March and it was 75% drawn and much of it had capped honey. I put the queen excluder on the top and covered that with a medium super with some partially drawn comb. I put her back together.
I went to Connie next. Connie has been bitchy, but with a few puffs of smoke there was no problem. Connie had the medium super that I left on last winter because I was afraid that she would starve because of the bad late summer and fall that we had. The super seemed to weigh about 40 pounds. It probably weighs less, but I had a tough time lifting it. It was packed with capped honey.
I put a queen excluder down and a medium super and put the full super on top. I will come back soon to harvest it, but I have to build my honey extractor first.
Next were the two new hives that I installed as packages on April 9. it has been 21 days and by my count this is the earliest that the brood could be coming out. They are fairly aggressive when I feed them, but the smoke did its job. I have been concerned about Ethel as she has half as many bees in front as Justine. I opened her up first and again the top feeder was glued to the middle three frames. Ethel is two deeps. The top deep was all new black Perco frames and 5 frames were almost fully drawn and full of uncapped honey. I lifted the top deep and the center frame of the bottom hive was full of brood. Yes!
Since Ethel’s top deep was drawn so well I put a queen excluder on top and a medium super with some partially drawn frames.
I went to Justine and it was the same story. There were lots of bees. It seems that there were many more than I could have possibly shook out of the package. Maybe I have my calculations wrong and the brood have been emerging. Again there was good comb on the black Percos and I put a queen excluder on and a medium super.
I have now 4 supers that I might be able to harvest at the end of may and one that is already full that I will use to test my honey extractor when I make it.
The flowers are going crazy here and there is lots of nectar. The top feeders still had some sugar in them, but I will mix up some more tonight or tomorrow and feed them in case we get some rainy days. The weather looks, good, though and I think the bees are doing much better than I thought they would.
I will sleep better tonight.
