Temperatures today were around 13°C,
activity near the hive was rather calm when I checked, but steadily improved when the sky cleared in the afternoon. Color of pollen being brought in yellow to white pollen.
I shot another video of my bees and I've been thinking how difficult it will be for me to remove frames from my boxes.
In the top most box everything has tilted to the sides after I did the cutouts and didn't have any rubber bands at hand so strung the comb up with wire.
In the middle box there's 6 frames Simplex size, where mine are bigger (Zander size) and the bees have been building out comb in the room that's inbetween the hive and the smaller frames.
I finished up my long hive project but I'm not very happy with the outer cover. It keeps the hive dry, but it's clumsy to take it off the hive.
Here's what I did First I measured up the inner measurments of the hive so I could make a space-reducer preventing the bees access to the entire hive. Then I cut out a piece of thin wood and stapled it to a frame :
Then I tried fitting it into the hive:
First I couldn't fit the frame in, but after I cut a bit off it went in to easy:
I'm afraid there's too much space on the one side and bees might get trhough there. I'll have to fix that somehow.
I also put the inner cover on top of it to see if any gaps were visible there. But that seemed to fit ok.
I'm wondering if I'll use some foam to stuff in between the hive wall and the frame to close the gap or if I could find some sort of strap of bristle.
I'll be on the lookout for that.
After this was done I put some foundation (full sheets) in some frames and filled the hive alternating frames with foundation and foundationless.
I also stapled a landing board of sorts on the hive:
Some of it is not protected by the outer cover, so I don't think it'll last very long.
Might have to put some plastic there instead.
Bob Out
