Healthy Happy Honey Bees in Charlotte
  • T's Bees Blog
  • Nucs 2018
  • Swarm 911!
  • Contact
  • Honey Uses
  • Links

T's Bees Blog

Wherein you learn all the trials and errors, successes and failures of a simple city beekeeper.

Success in June

6/12/2011

 
Picture
_Festooning occurs when the bees hang together, each holding onto each other's legs thus forming a chain, on the outside of the hive to cool off. With the super hot weather we've been having lately, the bees are no exception in wanting to stay cool. I caught a bit of festooning one night around 9:00 p.m. It was fun to watch, as they were moving very slow and continuous.

On Saturday my mentor and friend Richard Flanagan came over to help me inspect and possibly add on to the hive. Last week Hernan and I saw a lot of capped brood. Throughout the week I noticed lots of little young bees around the entrance doing orientation flights. I was excited to see how they'd done in a week. It was great to have Richard over


Picture
_With the top and feeder removed, we gave them a couple puffs of cool smoke before we started. Not too much, just a little (L).

A top view for visual comparison's sake. You can see the frames that came with the nuc (the unmarked frames) have been fully drawn out. I was hopeful they'd done some good work on my Duracomb frames in the week since I'd seen them begin to build comb. They've eaten about a gallon and a half of syrup in the past week (R).
Picture

Picture
_I was super excited to see this. The end frames were still empty, BUT in the upper right corner you can see that they've begun to draw out comb! It's in a little circular shape. And there were bees all over all of the frames, another good sign. There was only one end frame still waiting to be touched.


Picture
_Here's another one of my Duracomb frames. HOORAY, success! One side fully drawn out with comb. We saw two frames that were empty on both sides last week each had one side fully drawn out this week. You can see capped honey on this one.


Picture
_And another one of my frames with one side fully drawn, capped honey and eggs in the open cells in the middle. It was great to have my mentor who'd helped me build these frames, pull some out and see them being worked and filled by my first colony. What a great way to start a Saturday in June! There were more bees visible than last week, so a decent amount of hatching has taken place.


Picture
_The queen was spotted on one of the older frames. She was very fast. I followed Hernan's advice and put that frame back in, and lifted out another. This one was super heavy with capped brood, bees and honey. Over all Richard and I saw very little pollen being stored. Hopefully they'll pick up steam in that regard and start to bring in their food from the neighborhood. I've seen pollen coming into the hive, but there is very little stored ... so far. Something to monitor in the following weeks


Picture
Another one of my frames, fully drawn out on one side and eggs laid in the open cells. That's right, the queen has been busy laying eggs in the freshly drawn comb. I saw a single egg in each of these open cells, in the morning sun.


Picture
Richard said it was time to add the second brood box. Since I'm using a nine-frame configuration on the bottom I have to maintain nine frames for the top box to keep air flow and travel easy between the boxes. He showed me which frame to pull from the bottom; one filled with lots of capped brood and capped honey and a good amount of bees. We put that in the middle of the top box. On the bottom box we staggered the end frames with an adjacent frame to encourage them to draw that comb out as well. We put the empty frame we removed from the top box and put it in the middle of the bottom box. All frames got a spraying of thin syrup to encourage the girls to take to these frames. Previously, they left my Duracomb frames alone until I sprayed them with syrup. Whether that's coincidence or empirical evidence I don't know. But why mess with success? So all empty Duracomb frames get a misting of syrup, is my rule of thumb. Here, Richard holds up the last one for me to spray as we wrap up.


Picture
Richard uses my nine-frame spacer to get the ends of the top bars in correct position.

And now my hive has grown by another deep's worth. We saw one small hive beetle (SHB). Only one was spotted last week. So only two SHB's in two weeks is a sign of a very healthy hive. We also saw only a single wax moth this week. Fortunately it wasn't in the hive but between the top cover and inner screen cover. Another good sign. Richard and I poured another gallon of syrup into the top feeder, and let them get back to work.



Comments are closed.

    Bees for Sale

    Get the very best in Charlotte's local nucleus colonies for sale, with a personal touch, by clicking HERE.
    Picture

    Tom Davidson is the owner and beekeeper at T's Bees.

    Subscribe by email

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Categories

    All
    2 Queen Hives
    2-queen Hives
    9 Frames
    9-frames
    Apiary Inspection
    Autumn
    Bait Hives
    Bee School
    BPMS
    Cartoons
    Combs
    Cut-outs
    Drawn Out
    Early Spring
    Early Summer
    Early Winter
    Extracting
    Feeding
    Flora
    Foundation
    Foundationless
    Hardware
    Inner Covers
    Insecticide
    Late Autumn
    Late Spring
    Late Summer
    Late Winter
    Mentoring
    Mid Spring
    Mid Summer
    Mid Winter
    Mid-winter
    Nucleus Colonies
    Nucs
    Orientation Flights
    Oxalic Acid
    Packages
    Plasticell
    Pollen Patties
    Queen Cells
    Queens
    Small Cell
    Splits
    Swarms
    Tanging
    Trap Outs
    Trap-Outs
    Treatments
    Washboarding
    Wax
    Winter

    Archives

    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    December 2010

  • T's Bees Blog
  • Nucs 2018
  • Swarm 911!
  • Contact
  • Honey Uses
  • Links
✕