For the third time in my life, I will be heading out to my new bee yard tomorrow.
May 1: I installed two pkgs. of bees in two separate hives. (I'm using medium supers.) Two top feeders filled with 1 gallon each 1:1 sugar water.
May 2: I checked on each hive to be sure the pkgs were completely vacated (they were), that the bees were in the hives (they were), and that the queens were alive in their cages and not being "balled." Both queens seemed to have been accepted by the workers, so I carefully uncorked & punctured the candy of both queen cages, and inserted queen cages, angled down, between the middle frames.
So! Tomorrow, May 5 (Happy Cinco de Mayo, btw, y'all) I will go out to:
-Check to see if queens have been released from their respective cages,
-Look for queens in the frames. (I got marked queens, so I'm hoping this will be easy...or at least not hard.)
-Check the frames to see if eggs have been laid, and where,
-Clean frames of any burr comb that may have resulted from improper frame spacing. (I'm second-guessing myself here...can't remember if I pushed frames back together last time I was "in there." I was pretty flustered.) However, I'm not real sure of exactly how to eradicate burr comb without causing "World War Bee," so any tips you might have are appreciated. Then, I plan to:
-SPACE frames properly before putting top feeders back in place. :-P
-Check sugar water levels. I'm going to leave on May 8th, and won't be back to check on my hives again until May 14th. I'm sure they'll be okay without me, right? What else do I have to do to prepare for a nine day absence? I have one gallon of sugar water made up now. That would be a 1/2 gallon per top feeder. Should I make more tonight?
-Check the bubble level and shim the hives forward more, if necessary...we've been getting a lot of rain lately...I don't want anybody drowning while I'm gone! I think the hives are only very slightly angled forward now...I'm going for a half-bubble forward.
-AND...big question! Should I take the entrance reducer out? It's on it's smallest ( 1/2" ?) setting now. There's also a larger (~2") option, or the option of taking it out altogether. Quite the "bee-bottleneck" I've been witnessing at the hive entrance the past couple of days...What to do, what to do...?
So, if there's anything I've forgotten here, especially in light of the fact that I will be 225 miles away until May 14th, please let me know!
Also, if you experienced beekeepers have any helpful tricks to make any of the above-mentioned tasks go more smoothly, I'd love to hear them.
(For example, I was told not to hold a frame over the pallet or grass, because if the queen is on it and falls off, I likely won't find her. That's a good tip! I'm taking a big plastic storage tub out with me and holding frames over that.)
Thanks in advance for your help and words of encouragement. Don't know what I'd do without this forum! I've read so many helpful posts. Thank you, everyone!
-Mel :)
I'm no help to most of your questions since I'm a brand-new beekeeper too, and I've only just done my second inspection. BUT, the lady at the bee farm who sold me my bees says YES, if the weather is warm enough, and the bees seem to be bottlenecking, to open your reducers to the next-large size. My books say keep the reducers in for 8 weeks, but that seems a bit long to me. We'll see. Today I did open the reducers to the larger size and I hope I haven't ruined everything. ;-)
Thanks, "wickedlibrarian!" Hoping for the best tomorrow...I study & study,& try to pre-visualize myself doing everything in a calm, cool, & collected fashion...then I get out there & lose my mind. LOL.
I know it is fun to look at the bees. Been there. But now if the queen comes with the package. I usually leave out about 4 frames on a deep and dump the package in there. Then take out the candy plug or cork and lay it down on the bees and slap the lid on. Give it a day and go get the queen cage out and put the frames back in. I only use 9 frames in a 10 frame hive. Then I dont even lift the lid for about 10 days and just check for larva. If I find some I dont want to see queen. Just lots of bees in a few weeks. Your bees are happier if you dont mess with them. And every time you lift a frame you take a chance of killing her. Harold.
But I have to check that the queen cage is empty, no? And check the sugar water? Bothering the bees isn't my idea of fun...I just want them to be healthy and productive. What about disease and infestations? How do you know the hive is sound if you don't look for signs of potential problems?
Like I said take out the queen cage on second day. But after that leave them alone except to feed if you are on undrawn foundation. Check to see when it is warm out if they are bringing in pollen on their legs if so then they are feeding young. How much healthier can they be? If you have some foundation for them to build on while feeding then they may not bother with to much burr comb. But they will build some but it is normal.
Thanks to all for your input. I did replenish the sugar water (Dang, those suckers put it AWAY!) and took out the 2nd queen's (now empty) cage on Monday, 5/7. I didn't inspect any further than that. Weather was cooler and cloudy, and I thought they'd be happier without me poking around.
I'm away from the bees this week, but will be back with them on 5/15, so that will be my first frame-pulling visit. Now I'm starting to angst-out over whether I'll know what I'm looking at when I see it! :-P LOL...I'm a beekeepin' MESS, y'all!
Still, I can't help but wonder if it's better to approach life (and bees) assuming that you know everything, or that you know nothing?
Hmmmm.
Fun reading your posts, because you are expressing all the points I'm thinking. New at this too. Hopefully our bees will tolerate our ineptness and we will all survive our first year. Lots of fun.