question for all

greenismycolor · June 01, 2009, 05:47:08 PM

Hi everyone.
Is it just me and/or my area or does anyone notice that the hives seem to be progressing in their comb/honey making slower this year?
patti

Kathyp · June 01, 2009, 06:14:43 PM

mine are doing much better, but that's not saying much after the last two years!

jeremy_c · June 01, 2009, 06:25:21 PM

For a new beek, what is slow? i.e. did you install a new 3# package and they have 8 frames filled or 20 frames filled?

Jeremy

greenismycolor · June 02, 2009, 01:14:23 AM

Hi Jeremy
I have 2 established hives. I made 2 splits from one of them, they have new queens and building their brood now.

The other one has a lot of bees, a super with wax foundation and in 3 weeks they have only drawn out 2 frames of comb and filled and almost capped one frame.
They also seem to be randomly building comb, meaning drawing some on several frames but not finishing or filling it. This is my 3rd year beekeeping and last year was my first to get honey. This year everything inside the hive seems slower. Last year they really seemed to pack the honey and cap it fast.

I hope yours are doing well.
Patti

SgtMaj · June 02, 2009, 05:19:46 AM

Quote from: greenismycolor on June 01, 2009, 05:47:08 PM
Hi everyone.
Is it just me and/or my area or does anyone notice that the hives seem to be progressing in their comb/honey making slower this year?
patti

I think it's all this rain we've been getting. They build comb when there's nectar coming in right? But with all the rain they've not had as many opportunities to forage, thus, slow building...

greenismycolor · June 02, 2009, 06:28:18 PM

I thought the same SgtMaj. We had a LOT of heavy rain in early spring, lots of blooms but the bees couldn't get out. What do you think about feeding them? Our weather has cleared for close to 2 weeks now and they are foraging. I've held off on the syrup as I didn't want them to store it.
patti

Kathyp · June 02, 2009, 06:31:17 PM

look inside and see what they have stored. chance are, with a good flow going on, you'd do more harm than good if you feed now.

sc-bee · June 03, 2009, 12:32:34 AM

Definitely been slower here!!!

SgtMaj · June 03, 2009, 01:21:18 AM

Quote from: kathyp on June 02, 2009, 06:31:17 PM
look inside and see what they have stored. chance are, with a good flow going on, you'd do more harm than good if you feed now.

That's my thought too.

The past couple weeks have been good and they've been building comb and storing honey for these past few weeks pretty well. It's just that they were denied a whole month of foraging here due to the bad weather we had been having.

wxton · June 03, 2009, 09:55:29 AM

things seem slower here too! this is my 3rd season with my bees. Started with 2 3#packages. they drew out all there brood foundation and then a full medium. that was in 2007. They filled 2 1/2 mediums last year but this year I have 1 super filled and capped (actully I already extraced it..SHB can be bad in my neck of the woods) with the rest nowhere even close to being filled. So yes I feel that things are slower here too. But like it was mentioned...I think it is the rain this year.

TwT · June 03, 2009, 04:46:06 PM

this has been a weird year, seems they have done better in the last 3 drought years on drawing comb and and on honey, just seems the flow wasn't as good this year and that can hurt drawing comb.

Tucker1 · June 03, 2009, 05:04:57 PM

Our spring this year was different. It was cooler and wetter than normal. The girls stayed indoors quite a bit of the time. So, I ended up feeding them more than I expected. I had given my older and largest hive extra empty comb to help with their spring build up. That hive is even larger than before and is now working hard collecting nectar.

My smallest hive has been really building up in size and has a new queen. It too had been feed heavily during the cold wet spring.

From my perspective, it seems that the cool and wet spring here, prohibited the bees from getting to the plants/trees that blossomed
during this time frame. Will they be able to make up for the wet spring? I'm hoping that the increased size of my hives can compensate for the wet spring and the net result will be a fairly good year. Time will tell if I'm right in my thinking.

Regards,
Tucker