My dad is back from his 2 month RV trip, which means we'll be extracting the honey that's been patiently waiting in his garage at some point here within the next few weeks! Yesterday we treated for mites and got them all covered and ready for winter. Stay tuned for the movie....as you can see, I've BEEn busy prepping for Halloween! :-) Maybe next year I can convince my boys to dress as bees so I can wear my bee suit. Haha!
Last week I went to feed the bees again on September 27th. Beeatrice's sugar syrup was only maybe 1" down from full. The holes in the pail lid seemed to be plugged with wax or propolus...not sure if that was an issue, or if the bees are trying to tell me they have enough food! But, Beeatrice is light on food so I tried scraping the lid and getting the holes un plugged, and filled it up again. I picked up a couple more buckets (and the two empty deeps we need to cover the pails) from my Dad's last weekend.
Today I went to check the bees' feeder pails, and also checked the weight of the boxes to make sure they are getting filled up with honey for winter. Beeatrice's pail was down about 1/3, so she took more syrup than last time. Must have helped unplugging the holes! I topped hers off. The top box was pretty heavy, and the other two light. Wondering if I should try double feeder pails right on top of the frames...though my dad reminded me that we also want to be careful not to over feed, stimulating the queen to start laying eggs again. We'll leave it as is for now and see what happens next week.
Penelobee's pail was down maybe 3/4, so she's slowing down a little with taking the syrup. I filled it up. The two top boxes were both heavy, and the bottom one light, which is what we want to happen. The bees should start the winter hangin' out in the bottom box, and then will move up throughout the winter as they need food. Here's a video from today!
While I anxiously await my dad's return from vacation so we can extract the honey that's waiting for us, I'll just keep on feeding! Till next time! :-)
