I was excited to finally get back in to see what the girls had been up to, check on the queens, look for eggs and see how the hive had grown so far. I only had one hive top feeder, so three of the hives were without syrup on a daily basis. I did squirt them liberally with sugar water daily, but I was interested to see how things developed. Oddly, the hives that I were most concerned about did the best this last week.
Hive 1 had all wax foundation and a hive top feeder to stop. It was nearly empty when I checked them today, and I know why - they were fusing all of the frames together. It was a total mess. I had no idea what to do with it so I sliced though what I could and saved the frames I could and replaced the completely messed up frames with new frames with plastic (this won't be good, but it was all I had). I replaced two frames. The girls were not happy with me - it wasn't a good start.
Hive 2 was one that I was concerned about, it has a darker location, no hive top feeder and had spacers in between the frames so there were only 9 frames. This have did GREAT! Located the queen no problem, eggs were there, comb was being drawn on 5 out of the 9 frames (time to put on a new super next week I think - wow this is going fast) - I did put in some drawn comb from my last hive two years ago. The seemed to like it. This was the best hive, it made me feel like I knew what I was doing. I saw brood cells and there were honey cells around the tops of the frames. It was by the book. Very nice. I was in and out of there in a matter of minutes.
Hive 3 confirmed that I have no idea what I'm doing. It took me two times through the hive and still I didn't see a queen. I did, however see eggs so I didn't feel too bad about it. There were supercedure cells that I knocked off the frame. How is it possible they would start to do that already. The queen box was empty - I will have to go back in in a few days to find the queen. If she's not there and I can't find eggs - I'm going to have to order a new queen. Should be fun.
Hive 4 was a crazy mess, just like Hive 1. Frames of comb were fused together, crossing over - even though I used well-secured wax foundation. I couldn't lift the frames out because they were fused together so I sliced through two of the most drawn frames and pushed those frames to be the first and tenth frame in the hive - supported by the box so we didn't lose all the comb, then I replaced every other frame with cleaner frames from the hive w/ wax foundation. I hope that they don't abscond - it was traumatic for them - I'm sure. Also, there was a lot of burr comb that I pulled off as well. I wasn't sure what to do, but MAN the girls were unhappy! I couldn't find the queen from this hive and I swear I saw what looked like a queen cell starting to be built so I scraped it off as well. In addition, since I couldn't lift the main frames out, I couldn't check for the queen or eggs on them. I'm going blind on this hive and will have to go back in a few days to check for the queen and eggs.
Sigh - it was tough when I saw that the comb was crossing frames - my heart was breaking because of all of their hard work had gone to waste. All told, it took two hours and I don't know if I did the right thing by these bees. I found it was very easy to tell the drones and when the queens were present they were very easy to spot (thank you H&R Apiary). I loaded the hive top feeders for all the hives and thought that it was time to order the next deep super since things were progressing much faster than I had originally anticipated.
Some of the burr comb was filled with unsealed honey - It was beautiful. I'm going back into the hives where I couldn't find the queen in a few days, I'll let you know how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment