Budding Cottage

Today I nipped into the apiary for a quick check on sugar syrup levels – to discover that both Hive A and Hive B had guzzled their way through the best parts of around 3 pints each of sugar syrup.  Time for a quick top up.

I then pulled out the varroa boards to see what was on them.

On hive A there was  mould beginning to form where honey, syrup and pollen had been lying together.  No real evidence of mites, but pollen was both yellow and brown and it looked like there was a trussed up caterpillar corpse.

On hive B there was a pile of bright yellow pollen on the left hand side of the hive where they have been focussing on drawing out the foundation into comb.

On both floors the red ants from the vegetable patch were having small ant parties where syrup or honey had dripped.

I realised, after the HBKA workshop, that the point of the varroa boards was to monitor the mite drop at specific times rather than leave the boards full time, so I removed both sets of boards and cleaned them with soda crystals.  I plan to whitewash them and use them properly for varroa monitoring purposes rather than leave them in full time.  However, I will check to find out what most beekeeepers do in the winter – presumably a mesh floor is a bit draughty then?

So much to learn.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 at 7:03 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.