Sunday, February 28, 2016

Feeder removal, brood checking.

I removed the empty feeder bottle today, and while I was at it I checked the empty super I put on last week....

Not a frame was touched, all empty still.  The other frames in the brood box I had cleaned up were not touched either.  I decided to remove the empty super since it was not in use.  Once they start to draw out the other frames in the brood box, I will put the super back on.

I was able to remove every frame today except for the middle one.  That middle frame basically has 3 combs attached to it and I am pretty sure that's where all the brood is (hard to tell since I can't see between combs very well).  I pried in the frame very slowly, and the "wild" comb didn't seem to be very stable so I thought it would be better to leave it be.

I completely forgot about taking pictures of the frames while I had them out.  It was my first time handing frames that had busy bees on them, and I would of felt horrible if I dropped the frame or something because I was trying to take pictures...   Maybe next time!!

It was nice to be able to remove all the other frames though.  I can't wait to get them out of that messy hive box and into something more manageable.

I think I am going to make some honey / sugar patties tonight and try to get them in the hive in the next day or two.




Thursday, February 25, 2016

Opened up the hive the other day (Tuesday the 23rd) and removed 4 frames (the 2 outer ones on each side) in an effort to clean up the uneven frame spacing. I enjoyed the work, being close to the bees and not having any issues. I was able to put an extra frame back in bringing the total to 8 frames.

Here's some pictures:



One side with nice drawn foundation.

This is the other side. Nice comb, but it's not on the foundation.

All the burr comb and cross comb I removed.




This is the gap between two of the brood frames, there is another comb between them that the bees built to make up their "beespace".



I put this frame in before I took the messy cross comb frames over to the garage to clean them up, and the bees evidently decided to measure out their new foundation right after I put it in!


My next time opening the hive will be to try and get the brood frames separated out (if possible) and get another frame into the hive, or maybe all the frames into the hive (10 total).

Monday, February 22, 2016

Hive removal from my boat last year, April 25th 2015

Took Mark and I about 4 hours all said and done to get everything out of the boat.

Thanks to Mark for doing this and letting me assist.  He took home some honey and comb =)






Sunday, February 21, 2016

First hive inspection in 2 months or so.  Looks like they are still alive!  I think most of the comb on the outside of the hive is empty... Hard to tell since I can't take out the frames without lots of destruction, due to the frames being spaced out (I bought the hive like that... Didn't know until I got it home and opened).  I love these bees though, and they apparently don't mind me much when I poke around in there.

Don't ever put the lid on without filling up the hive body with frames!!!

I added a new deep hive body on top with 10 frames of foundation.  I want to encourage them to move out of that filled body ASAP because it's really hard for me to tell what's going on inside, and I don't want them to swarm.  Have to get them out of this hive box so I can clean it out.  Makes me sad that I can't pull out frames and look!