I opened my hive today in preparation for winter - thoughts & questions?

OzBuzz · May 01, 2010, 03:40:12 AM

Hi Everybody,

I opened my hive today in preparation for winter... over the past few weeks the hive has been booming! the queen has been profusely laying and every inch of the brood chamber was packed! i put some medium boxes on a few weeks ago to give them a bit more space... but today i opened the hive to get it prepared for winter. The two medium boxes of drawn frames had lot of nectar in them, a few capped cells of honey and lots of activity but in preparation for winter i needed to remove those boxes so they can keep the hive temperature ok during the cooler months.

The queen is perfect - she is reducing the size of the brood nest and there are still plenty of capped brood cells, pupae and also new eggs. There's also a lot of empty cells that the workers are starting to fill with nectar for winter stores - there are also some nice pollen stores. I'm confident that i don't need to provide any supplementary feeding as there are two frames (frames 1 & 8) that are chockers and all of the others range between 40-50% full of honey. .

My question is this - i took the two medium boxes off without shaking the bees out. I just set them on a base to the side of the hive with a lid and i'm going to let them take the nectar out of the two medium boxes and take it back to the main hive. My wonder is - as i didnt shake the bees off the frames will they realise that they're no longer part of the main hive? will they instinctively return to the main hive at sunset?

OzBuzz · May 01, 2010, 07:41:34 PM

Anybody?

OzBuzz · May 02, 2010, 12:21:23 AM

No one knows if the bees will instinctively fly back to the main hive or if they would stay working the frames thinking that they're still part of the main hive?

robbo · May 02, 2010, 07:48:55 AM

The ones that know how to fly will, yes. They want to be with the queen. This stack of supers you moved aside has no queen smell.

They know how to work that kind of stuff out for them selves.

OzBuzz · May 02, 2010, 08:00:42 AM

Thanks robbo, that's what I was hoping... I was worried I'd have a few hundreds bees on the frames, not go back to the main hive, and die from the cold.

buzzbee · May 02, 2010, 03:24:41 PM

I think I would have moved the supers above the inner cover of the main hive. setting them off to the side could start a robbing frenzy that may continue to the main hive. At the very least,move them some distance from the original hive.

OzBuzz · May 02, 2010, 09:43:43 PM

Thanks buzzbee, i don't mind if they rob the supers and take it back to the main hive although moving it away from the main hive would stop any outside bees potentially coming in to mine and robbing from that - which i don't want. I had a few frames that i needed cleaned and just sat that to the side - didn't have any problems with those ones.

Thanks for your replies everybody... my main concern was whether or not the bees that were attached to the frames in the supers i set to the side would return to the main hive come night fall. The nights are getting colder here and i didnt want to run the risk of having a few hundred bees dead from my stupidity especially going in to winter when i need as many bees as i can keep in the hive.