Finally I'm here with the conclusion of the events from my last post (Friday 20 july).
It isn't happy news... But first:
Weather Report:
I could put the dates down from july 20th to today, but appart from 2 days where we had a bit of rain, it would be more of the same. With temperatures climbing to 36°C. Hey, predictions are we're going to have days above 40°...I personally am hoping for some cooler days.
Hive Report:
I'll do a full hive report today even though I didn't open up any existing hives...
Simplex Nuc: Near the enterance of this hive I always see good activity, not as early in the morning as my SS 1 2018 (who are black bees) but still good activity. A good amount of guard bees are always to be found near the enterance and they have their job cut out for them; This year has been encredible favourable for wasps it seems. There are a lot of them out there and near my hives you can always find 3 - 4 buzzing around. They feast on dead bees in front of my hives and honesty commands me to admit I've killed a dozen or so while looking at my bees.
Looking through the windows on this hive I can report: no changes at all. No building up in the empty frames, no activity in the bottom box.
I'm not planning to open this hive up till next spring.
SS 1 2018: With great relief I can tell you guys this hive is doing allright. I've opened up the bottom hive enterance a couple of days when I spotted bees through the windows of what used to be the deep of SS 2 2018 dragging dead wax moth larvae about. It didn't take a minute before the bees found the hole in the bottom and started dragging rags and wax moth larvae out of there. After a couple of days I didn't spot any activity near the bottom enterance anymore, so closed it up again leaving the top enterance open. As with the simplex nuc I can see bees in the enterance and this hive is usually more active earlier than the two others on my apiary number one (with the Simplex nuc and PC 1 2018)
I'v seen white and orange pollen come into this hive.
As for feeding them, I have given them twice 1,5 l of sugar water 1:1 since last report, the second time being today!
There are some bees checking the bottom box and there should be a frame of patty in there. This is why I plan on opening this hive at least once more in the future. I hope to call a friend and have him assist me, so I can't say when I'm actually going to go about my business.
PC 1 2018: As happy as I was when I got this swarm, that's how worried I am now. Of my three hives this one is showing least activity. It might have everything to do with the frames I took out (see last blogpost - Friday july 20). I might have weakened the hive in doing so and worst case scenario, I moved out the queen when I took the frames and now she's dead or killed the queen that swarmed and is now in a 6-frame nuc called SD 1 2018. I'm hoping it's the first scenario, where I removed 3 frames, 2 of them with a lot of brood, and thus removing places for this queen to lay in. Causing a low worker force and thus a weaker hive...
Al this is reason enough for me to open up the hive again for a full inspection when opening the SS 1 2018.
TO 1 2018: I have not gone back even though I wanted to. Should make it top priority.
TO 2 2018: This hive is still being fed at the same rate (more or less) as the SS 1 2018 (so they got a batch of 1,5 liter of 1:1 sugar today and one last week. There is very nice activity near this hive and I'm not planning on opening it till next spring. As with the hives in my apriary 1, the hives on my apiary 2 also have wasps buzzing about. Not in the amount one of my next videos should show you (God I'm behind on that) but they are still looking for easy pickings. This hive is not one!
The only thing I'll need to do is put some wire-mesh in front of the entrance to prevent mice from getting in!
SD 1 2018: This is a nuc I'm going to overwinter. It is looking strong with a lot of bees going in and out. The reduced enterance I created got removed so they are using the entire 6-frame lenght of opening in there. I'm going to have to reduce this down before mice decide to go in aswell. But I'm not opening the nuc if I don't have to till next spring.
JH 1 2018: Oh what a dissapointment this has been. I took 2 hives from the beekeeper his property as told on Thursday 19 july. The big hive I talked about got an inspection as soon as I moved them (23rd july) and got reduced down to 2 deeps instead of 3. In the top deep there was nothing going on. The comb was drawn out but that's it. I used some of that comb to replace the one in the second box that was infested with wax moth. There were almost no bees in here and only one frame of honey (capped). I decided to give them the box back with the bad frames replaced with better ones from the top box. Then I looked in the bottom box and should've reduced the hive down further. Only 3 frames out of 10 had bees on them and on only 1 of them there was a spotted brood pattern. I think I spotted a queen, but was not sure about it. I did not reduce them down but instead closed the hive with the adjusted super on it. I came back the 28th to see nothing but wasps near the enterance, they were going inside freely. I feared the worst and came back the day after when I had time to inspect the hive. 29th of July I declared this hive as 'dead'. I removed all boxes from the stand and placed them a good 20-30 m away to be robbed out.
That being said there was another hive I moved from his home to my apiary number 2 and up till today it's still going. Not in a good shape if you ask me, but it's not dead... I also inspected it on the 23rd and out of the 10 frames there were 5 being used, 3 with brood. Activity near this hive has been on the 'low' side of things. Where the SD 1 2018 and the TO 2 2018 show a good coming and going of bees, this hive has a lot less activity. I had to sit there for a while before I was sure it wasn't neighbouring bees robbing the hive out. I'm not going to open up thi hive at all If I don't need to. If they make it, good, then I hope they get to boom next year, if they don't. Well I might use the hive to make splits.
The log: The log, you ask? What log? I went out there to retrieve the cut down tree. The beekeeper came and took us there, only to find out the two pieces of log were gone. No where to be found. I don't want to accuse anybody without having proof, but I have a good idea of what might have happened. So no log for me...
And that's it for my hive report.
To help myself I'm going to make a to do list next; To help me organise my thoughts. I might introduce a 'did I do it' next time, or might just include the data in my hive report, not sure yet, but stick around and you'll find out!
To do list:
- Retrieve the TO 1 2018 and make arrangements on what to do next year... Give it another go, or let the home owner kill the bees.
- Open up PC 1 2018 with the intent of doing an inspection. Suppose the PC 1 2018 has no queen in it, I might ask about in my club or put the SD 1 2018 queen in with this hive and put the bees from that hive (since I have no clue how to add bees in a long hive without starting a war) in the slots of the filler frames I have in the SS 1 2018.
- Open up the SS 1 2018 to remove the feeder frame from it and if needed ad the bees from SD 1 2018 (if the PC 1 2018 needs a queen.) with frames and all (replacing the 4 filler frames, 1 feeder frame and maybe one foundationless frame that has no comb on it).
See you next time!
Bob Out
