I'm checking my beehives. It's early Monday morning, Memorial day. An over overcast morning and the smells are so amazing. The smell of flowers is heavy in the air (and burgers??). I'm going to check the beehives.Most of these notes, I could translate or revise to make sense, but Siri can't distinguish when I say "food' and "brood". Well, she just doesn't know the word "brood" I think, and she will substitute random things. Sorry Siri.
White hive: The top box has 3 1/2 frames build out it looks like they're all food frames. The bottom box has 3 1/2 frames of food. There are five full frames of brood. I can see eggs and larvae of all stages. I was getting afraid that it had so much food that there would be no brood. I did not see a queen - this hive has a marked queen so I should have seen her, but did not. Certainly plenty of evidence she is here and active. There are a lot of ants on top of the inner cover. I swept them out.
Green hive has the equivalent of two frames of food in the top box. The bottom box has equivalent of two frames of food, two empty frames and the rest brood. I can see eggs and all stages of brood, but again I did not find a queen.
Flowers blooming today are honeysuckle, ajuga and wild phlox. The temperature is about 60-80F.
Here's a comparison of my two hives five weeks after installing them. (Both had a second box added 2.5 weeks ago and their frame feeders removed the following week, so they each have 20 frames total now.):
I think you will love this
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbMV9qYIXqM
Milena
Milena, this is fantastic!! I love it. I've heard about the flow hive, but this is a great video.
ReplyDeleteMaybe someday I'll try a flow hive. I'm starting off all conventional while I'm learning. But my teacher (Rick of NEBees.com), who is very conventional and cautious thought these we great. I'll have to ask if he's tried one yet.
Have you tried this?
I came across a great paper reporting on the relationship between hive size (number of bees) and the amount of food stored. Like my bees, smaller hives stored less food relative to the number of brood, and larger hive stored more food relative to brood.
ReplyDeleteI would think it would eventually even out because the smaller hive will become bigger faster, since they are producing more brood.
We'll see...
Today is one week later. I usually check my hives on Monday, but today is very we and cool. I think the hives are established enough (and I have gotten the idea of whats going on in them) for me to move to checking them every other week.
I will do a sugar roll next week to check on the mite level. And, when the second box is about 50-70% full, I'll start a 1-week formic acid treatment (MiteAway2) (maybe week of June 15?). I expect a 90% decrease in mites from this treatment. Treatment should be just before my honey super goes on. With luck, I'm hoping to get the honey supers on the first week of July. That will be exciting!