So I hived my first colony 5-10-11. Three days later I opened it to make sure the quenn had been released and she had. Today I performed my one week inspection. All seemed well, I found eggs and uncapped brood on the center frames. I did find burr comb between them and presumed it was drones and left it. I found some of the outter frames being worked.
My question is this. My girls are bringing in lots of pollen and I know the nurse bees use this for energy. But they seem to be putting this right down the center of the comb. Is this normal, and will it change as they rear more brood as the colony increases?
if your frames are not pushed together, they will build burr comb. you want to correct that between the frames or it will be hard to do future inspections. as for where they store, they will shift things as they need space. as long as there is room for the queen to lay, don't worry about where they store stuff.
Quote from: forrestcav on May 19, 2011, 02:38:24 PM
I did find burr comb between them and presumed it was drones and left it.
Is this where you had your queen cage? The bees may have built this directly over her cage. You should remove it before it gets worse.
yes it's pretty much right beside where the queen cage was.
As aside I also put in my third quart of syrup too. This afternoon they were on something hot and heavy. I had a traffic jam at the reduced entrance, 5-6 trying to come or go at one time.
Joe, I'm having a little trouble understanding the question. The bees are putting the pollen down the center of a frame, or down the center of the frames? And I don't know if I would be qualified to actually answer either question.
I'm looking at a kind of mix of pollen and brood in the same frame. There's a bunch of open caps of honey, and they've got the whole super above to start drawing. The queen will lay where there's room to lay. I figure as long as there's brood, things are good. Of course I'm still building up bees, not making honey.
its kind of a strip horizonally accross the center of the center frames. There may be uncapped honey too I don't know. And there is brood mixed in. I only have the first brood box on.
I'm just guessing, but the fact nobody's jumped in with urgency tells me it's not that big a deal. They'll use that pollen pretty fast when they get the babies going.
If you're feeding syrup, you can't miss the uncapped stuff they've put in the cells, it looks like thick, clear, honey. I'm seeing stuff under tan color wax, fresh wax, and trying to decide if the bees are exhibiting Mellifera Ligustica behavior, or if I'm looking at another kind of behavior. Yeah, I can bore you to death.
Of course if they're getting the nectar and making honey from it, then it looks like honey. It can be any color from the amber to strong tea color depending on what they've been foraging. Back in the reckless and foolish day I used to feed them anything with sugar, fruit juice, donut glaze...
Many times with packages and swarms bees will store whatever they can where ever they can! I had a package this year fill the brood chamber of several frames with pollen and honey. I started the package with drawn comb. They need to get built up quickly if they are going to make it through the winter. They will fix it! When she gets that brood chamber full of eggs they will put it all to use! Remember, they say it takes on cell of honey and one cell of pollen to raise a bee. There are 1500 to 2500 being produced everyday during the honey flow!
well they seem to be on a flow and taking syrup averaging a qt a week.