Today was the first nice day since...well...ever! (this season!) Last week's blizzard gave us FEET of snow but it's mostly gone now and it was in the mid 60's! This gave us a chance to open up the hive, look through all of the frames, and clean all the winter "crud" out of the bottom board. We opened up all the entrances and Dad put in a couple Mite Away Quick Strips (MAQS). So, we had to take off the feeder pail for this week...they weren't taking much from it anyway. They have been loving the pollen patties though and are bringing in pollen from somewhere! Our friend who's land the bees are on says there have been tons of bees on their compost pile...interesting! They must be finding something tasty there!
We scraped off some goofy comb which you can see in the video in hopes they will follow the pattern in the foundation when they rebuild, except for one frame that had eggs in the goofy comb. So, good news, we know the queen is the top box and she's doing her thing. No capped brood yet though so we are early on in spring's baby bees! Next week we plan to take off the MAQS's, do a reversal (put the top box on bottom, and bottom on top) and put the feeder pail back on. Once we get more frames of eggs, larvae and capped brood, we may be able to do a divide! (turn the one hive into two) We also expect to have a NUC in the next week or two, to put in the other empty stack. Stay tuned! In the meantime, here's a video of what we did today!!
Super fun to see what you do from
ReplyDeleteAll angles! Educational too! So what would they have done with that weird comb you removed? And do you just melt it down for wax or toss it? I love how that GoPro goes IN the hive!!
They would still have used the cells to lay eggs, pack in pollen & honey, etc. But, we like them to stick to the pattern on the frames in general because it's easier to examine and to extract honey later. If you leave them too much space anywhere in the hive, they'll just fill it up with crazy comb, which is what they'd do in a hollow tree in the wild! ;-) The frames we humans put in there just keep things organized and give us the ability to look inside and make sure things are ok. Yes I'll melt down the wax and save it for putting in balms & things!
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