Hey folks,
I've been reading through the forum for the past few days and I am finally to the point where I need to ask advice. Before I had done all of the reading I wouldn't have understood the suggestions so hopefully I'm ready now.
Here's the situation.
Last summer my wife bought a pair of hives. She had ordered them earlier in the year but the guy we were buying from for one reason or another didn't have stock available so it took some time. I picked up the hives for her, while I was there the beek that we bought from moved the bees from a nuc to a 10 frame, deep hive body. I got them home, immediately put them down(directly on the ground) in an area we had designated for the bees.
I won't go into why, but the bees sat there, untouched and barely acknowledged up until last week. Last week I was working on our rather large vegetable garden(5500sq ft) prepping soil for planting in a couple of weeks when I got a wild hair to check on the bees.
So, now down to the details of our bees. Last Wednesday was when I first cracked the hives open, what I found was two hives that were probably slightly smaller in numbers than when they were first transferred from the nuc. I also found some sugar ants(thank god not fire ants) had also taken up residence in the hive. The ants weren't in huge numbers, but it was clear that they were helping themselves to whatever little stores the hives had. I took a brief look at the outer frames and in most cases there was nothing, not even comb on the frames. I should also mention that when the beek we purchased the hives from moved the nucs to the box he used plastic frames to fill out the box. I say this because I think I read somewhere that mixing frames like this is ill advised. At any rate, I decided that I needed to educate myself before moving any further inside the hive. I did however dust the hive with cinnamon before closing up.
After reading as much as I could Thursday I set out on Friday to move the hives about 6' from where they origionally were onto stands that I was about to construct. I built my stands out of concrete block and 18" sq paver stones that I had laying around. As it stands they are about 18" high facing east with prevailing winds from the south. The one mistake I did make is that the hives are not leveled to provide a slight forward tilt, they are actually tilted back a bit. At some point in the next few weeks I'll fix that little oops.
Saturday morning I built a couple new lids for the hives to allow for top feeding with mason jars. I painted them up on the exterior surfaces and then let them bake in the sun until Sunday afternoon. Sunday afternoon is when I finally got the new tops on, first inspecting for ants in the hives. Both hives didn't have any ants visible so I decided to go forward with the top feeding plan. I made the lid switch and added the 1:1 syrup solution to the top of the hive.
So, this is where I"m at now. I ordered frames from Dadant to replace the plastic frames in the hive, hopefully they'll arrive by next weekend. Hive 1 appears to be doing alright from the outside. I have seen some wrestling occuring but its unclear whether its drifters from Hive 2 or if they're having the occasional robber show up. Hive 2 is looking fairly weak with a minimal amount of traffic in and out.
My current plan is to wait until this weekend to do any more exploration into the hives. Hopefully the frames come in and I can do an inspection at the same time I replace the frames. I'm thinking I will take a look at hive 2 and if I can find the queen or evidence that she's there I may swap hive locations to give it a boost.
I haven't done anything to look at mite population but its on the to do list. Being new to the hobby I may have my priorities mixed up so please feel free to give me suggestions on plan modification.
One final thought... jeez this is addicting.
Thanks,
Leo
You can mix plastic an wooden frames . Bees will choose and draw out comb on the wooden wax first and then the plastic.
I assume that your plastic frames have comb fully draw , so its better to use them than putting in new undrawn wax.
To help the weaker hive you can take a frame of covered brood that is starting to emerge with the nurse bees on it and help the week hive by putting it in it.
Bee careful that the queen doesn't follow on the frame.
To help against the robbing make the entrance smaller so the bees can defend it easier
mvh edward :-P
Quote from: edward on March 07, 2011, 06:22:59 PM
You can mix plastic an wooden frames . Bees will choose and draw out comb on the wooden wax first and then the plastic.
I assume that your plastic frames have comb fully draw , so its better to use them than putting in new undrawn wax.
To help the weaker hive you can take a frame of covered brood that is starting to emerge with the nurse bees on it and help the week hive by putting it in it.
Bee careful that the queen doesn't follow on the frame.
To help against the robbing make the entrance smaller so the bees can defend it easier
mvh edward :-P
Sadly, the plastic frames I have are not full draw, they're just bare plastic foundation.
A few things bees need to draw out new comb , a flow of nectar/syrup/sugar water , heat in the hive and young bees to sweat out wax.
mvh edward :-P
They might not be strong enough to feel the need to draw out the plastic frames. Try scratching a finger nail across the frames to make sure they have a wax coating on them. If they're not coated the bees will make a mess of things.
Scott
I agree with Edward. Definitely make the entrance smaller on both. When swapping the brood frame make sure you have found and isolated the queen in the strong hive. I always like to see her, not guess that she is not on the frame I move. Also follow Edwards instructions about using capped ready to emerge brood, not eggs and uncapped.
Bees will only draw comb when there is enough bees to necessitate moving bees to a new frame. They will not draw comb on space they do not occupy. If the number of bees in a hive dwindles for any reason the remaining bees wil back fill brood cells until enough bees have hatched to force them onto another frame.
To get the bees to draw the comb one can do several things.
If one frame has no brood but contains only pollen and honey, move that frame one space away from the adjacent brood frames and replace it with a frame of undrawn foundation. The bees will abandon a frame that contains only stores of honey and pollen and will draw out the new frame. This helps by giving the queen new brood space and one can often see the queen busily laying eggs on foundation that the bees have just started working on.
Keep moving the stores only frame over one space at a time until all the frames are drawn. The hive should have at least 6-8 brood frames by that time. Feed the hive simple syrup but be careful not to over feed. Overfeeding will cause the bees to back fill brood frames that the queen needs to rear more bees. This is called "honey bound" and can depress a hive greatly.
Add a super when you move the last undrawn frame over the stores frame. In a 10 frame hive the 2 outside frames are generally stores only frames so comb drawing can be speeded up by bring in foundation from both sides, just remember that develop of the hive will stop until there is enough bees to cover the new frames.
I feed a week then let then be a week, this allows the bee time to process the syrup they were given, lets the queen laly eggs on the new foundation before the bees are overwelled with syrup and fill all the new cells with stores, preventing the queen from further brood production.