It's been a while since I've posted on here. But life is happening and there are a lot of things going on at once. My house is being painted on the inside and everything is out of place in boxes.
That does not mean I'm not looking at my bees anymore!
Let's dive into the ...
Weather Report:
Saturday 23 june 2018 - I think it's safe to day we're in a dearth. Earliest rain in the forcast is for friday july 6th! We had temperatures up to 25°C today and no rain.Sunday 24 june 2018 - More of the same, not quite 25°C but still dry.
Monday 25 june 2018 - And again with temperatures just over 25°C.
Tuesday 26 june 2018 - No change!
Wednesday 27 june 2018 - Temperatures are rising to 27°C
Thursday 28 june 2018 - Climbing up to 28°C
Friday 29 june 2018 - Holding it up there at 29°C
Saturday 30 june 2018 - Climbing over 30°C
Sunday 01 july 2018 - Holding it at 30°C and still no rain...
Monday 02 july 2018 - Today we had 31°C and my lawn is looking brown instead of green...
Hive Report:
Simplex Nuc: I'm glad to report the bees are building out comb in the super! Nothing special, you might think, but since I'm going to leave them in the 3 deep configuration year round I'm glad to see they are building their way down. I did not open the boxes to look inside them, all this info is from looking through the windows. My plans for this hive is to not open it again till next spring if I don't need to.
SS 1 2018: No inspection in this hive yet. Only some sound samples I took through the buzz-box app telling me the hive is ok. Looking at the activity near the enterance tells me the same. I had thought about not executing my plan to move this hive to my other apiary that is being set up, but I think I'm going to stick with my plans and move this hive to the new apiary. If all goes well with this one she'll be my queen I breed from next year! To move her out to the new apiary I still need to build a new hive. That'll be a long hive with Zander frame format. So I'll have to adjust the current frames again. Work never ends :-)
SS 2 2018: Ok so you know I've put a queen in here from the TO 2 2018 location and reduced the 2 deep configuration to a one deep. I did tell you guys I did not know what would happen and I can now tell you what did happen! I did half an inspection on tuesday the 26th of june of both this hive and the PC 1 2018. Both looked ok and in both cases I saw the queen. I was happy with how this SS 2 2018 looked. There was some open brood and I moved two frames with half foundation in between the 3 frames arleady in there hoping they would build it out ok. I did not inspect the 3rd frame in the box and maybe I should have. I might have seen the queencups or a second queen in there...
Looking inside through the windows on the 27th I was happy to see them building out comb next to the frame of brood. But then it happened. June 28th, I looked inside through the window and to my astonishment I could only find a small fistfull of bees clumped together on the middle frame and some bees running around on the frame of honey. What happened? The queen obviously did not take the other queen (or queencups) out. She absconeded again, and took a lot of bees with her, well maybe she swarmed because of the queens already in there... I think she didn't go far, a neigbour that keeps bees reported a small swarm landing in one of his empty boxes. Chances are she went there...
So now the SS 2 2018 is in bad shape. A fistfull of bees isn't a lot. There isn't a lot of activity near the enterance but what I see still is encouraging. Encouraging enough for me to let them die - or if they make it through, let them grow out a new hive. My hopes aren't up very high but I can tell you I see the bees quard the very small enterance, so I don't think they are being robbed out.
PC 1 2018: As you can read in the above report I did half an inspection in this hive. I found the queen on the 4th frame of like 10 frames with bees and stopped inspecting the rest. She's not marked and she has a solid brood pattern from what I saw. Not much else to do here but let them be. I'm still pondering to open up the hive again, but as it stands now I don't think I will. Hoping the bees know best I might not open them again. If I do it'll be to ensure the honey is all at one side of the brood before winter comes in. - I've read that the cluster in winter only goes one way in a long hive (or top-barhive) and it would be a shame to see them die of hunger if there was honey on both sides of the broodnest but they couldn't reach it because they only went one way... So plans are to let them be, unless I worry to much and open them up again. I'll try not to.
TO 1 2018: I was hoping to find the ladder back where it was when I placed the trap out today, but it wasn't, fetching a ladder from a friend didn't help (it was to short). Must plan to go back later in the evening and close up the enterance to the hive in the wall again.
TO 2 2018: I have not visited the hive since it's at my sisters place. I did prepare a hive stand at the new apiary (some car tires that are no longer in use stacked on top of each other with 2 beams over to support the hives). I also painted up the 2 deep configuration hive that I'll set up in the new apiary. Hoping to put the TO 2 2018 in there. (Or in to the long hive I'm building, not sure yet) Next tuesday at the earliest I'll be moving the hives and do an inspection overthere to see if I have to make 1 big hive out of the 2, if either is queenless for some reason, or if I can but up 2 hives there.
I'll keep you posted...
Bob Out
