25 May 2011 general maintenance
A visit to the bees today during a sunny patch of the day. I wanted to check their sugar syrup levels, which I had topped up last week. Sure enough they were guzzled dry.
Hive A were busy drawing comb in their first super. I didn’t check the brood box as they seemed very busy with what they were doing. I topped up the sugar syrup but noticed I had managed to squash a few bees last time. Thinking I may have to be more liberal with the smoke to drive them down whilst working with them.
Hive B had moved on and had 3 frames left to draw in the brood box, so I took out the dummy board and gave them a 4th. I also topped up their sugar syrup.
I checked the nursing bees hive and found that there appeared to be some capped brood at one side, however, I was really struggling to find any uncapped brood or eggs. Also many of the frames on the left hand side were overloaded with honey stores and there was what looked like sugar, sprinkled about. They may have been trying to clear out granulated stores – but were flatly refusing to touch the fresh foundation in the second brood box. I did have a quick look for a queen, but wasn’t sure whether I was just looking at a drone, at one point – I have not got my queen spotting eye yet.
These bees were much more sensitive than the other bees, maybe because I was pulling out frames and disturbing them more.
Lessons:
Get the smoker going well and keep it going! Use it to encourage bees to keep their heads down when closing up.
Don’t decide to top up the syrup before you then decide to check the hive and have to lift it off again.
May 25th, 2011
Topic: Hive A original, Hive B (Swarm bees from Malvern), Nursing bees Tags: None
