My 9yo son and I both got a bee hive for Christmas. We installed our packages the second week in May.
One hive is stronger than the other. I checked them both on Saturday and observed both queens at work. The queen in the strong hive is laying a lot more eggs than the other.
On the strong hive I've got a deep for the brood and two medium supers. The first supper is nearly full of capped honey. These bees are really active during the day. At night they cluster around the entrance on the bottom board.
The weaker hive has one capped frame of honey and a fair amount of uncapped honey. All during the day and at night there is about a 100 or so bees on the front of bottom brood body and they are just moving front to back constantly. This started about a week ago. I've got the same number of supers on this hive as well. I know they aren't ready for the second super but the hives are adjacent to each other and I'm using their covers to support some plywood for midday shade.
I read somewhere what I'm experiencing might be due to poor ventilation. I've got a screen bottom board and today I placed some paint stirring sticks between my inner cover and the top super.
Any suggestions or explanations are appreciated.
I would be careful giving the weak hive more room than they can defend. you may start having robbing troubles. If you have to put on a extra unneeded super put an empty one over the inner cover.
my guess is that they are guarding the entrance. there may have been some robbing attempts.
bees hang out when the temp is high, but the 100 or so moving back and forth sounds more like guarding.
be careful giving the weaker hive two entrances if there is robbing. you just give them more to guard.
how high have your temps been?
The bees moving back and forth are washboarding. It is a normal common behavior. No one knows why the bees do this. They may be polishing the entrance for some reason? Or adding a scent or propolis smell? These are guesses of couse because no one has been able to identify why bees washboard :-D!
a couple hundred hanging out no problem ----- big beards on front of hive in hot weather, usually ventilation issue.
It's been pretty hot here 95 -100 most days except for last week when we were 90-95.
The bees aren't really clustering around the entrance. They are on the front of the brood box above the entrance. I've been observing bees coming and going doing their forage work. Back when the temps were near 100 I did observe the bees fanning. They actually had rows of bees all pointed in the same direction - I guess waiting for their turn to fan.
There doesn't appear to be enough activity going on for robbing.
Wash boarding? Yep that is what it looks like. Had me almost thinking they got some "loco" pollen somewhere. :-D
I take it from some of the comments I should take the extra super off and place it above the inner cover. Should I also close the hole in the middle of the cover to keep the bees from building any wax in there?
I'm going to try an post a pic this evening.
QuoteThey are on the front of the brood box above the entrance
sc-bee is correct. that sounds like washboarding. :-D