More construction 15 July 2011
The construction continues as I build up a supply of supers and brood boxes for emergencies and to be more set up for next year.
Dad has built from scratch a national hive, and painted it white. It now has pride of place in the field awaiting any possible swarms for next year. In the meantime I have been building two flat pack hives and so have a very sore hammer arm and shoulder and have a very sore finger after managing to hit it twice, hard, in quick succession with the hammer.
I have been trying to keep a “spares” catalogue so that I have spare supers for hives but also can adapt if I got any swarms or needed to split a hive. Instead this week I have tried to unite two hives – which is a move in the wrong or the right direction (not really sure yet…)
So, with the united hive we are currently at 3 garden hives; 2 orchard hives and then 3 spare empty hives in the field, 1 empty hive in the orchard and 1 empty hive in the garden. So currently 5 viable colonies and 5 empty homes! Sounds like a lot of surplus, but I keep remembering that we got 2 hives originally because you were supposed to ensure you had more than 1 colony. This rapidly moved to 3 hives when we got 2 swarms, and then multiplied again when I had to split a hive and again when I adopted 2 hives between May and July. So based on that element of variety at least I feel semi prepared for next year! Now the challenge is to get these babies setting up a strong colony for the winter! And maybe even some honey.
July 15th, 2011
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