What did you do in your Apiary/Bee yard today?

[beesnweeds]

Your bees wont draw anymore frames this year.  I would remove the top super and put the super with honey on top of the bottom deep and remove the top deep and overwinter them with 1 deep and 1 super.  Too much empty space (frames) makes it hard for them to raise and keep brood warm.  When you start packages, swarms, or nucs you have to allow them to build up at least 8 frames before adding more boxes.  Too much space slows them down, a lot.   Thats just my 2 cents maybe others have different ideas for you.

[Terri Yaki]

What would you do with the brood and stores that are on the extra frames? Should I place them on top of everything and would they clean it out? I was hearing that when the bottom box was somewhere about 60% filled, another box should be put in place to avoid swarming.

[Ben Framed]

Here is a picture of a painting she did while in college for a play her boyfriend was directing. The painting is 35 feet wide by 25 feet tall. She is standing in front of it.

I don?t know how I missed this! She is Blessed with pure talent! What a wonderful work of art!

[beesnweeds]

What would you do with the brood and stores that are on the extra frames? Should I place them on top of everything and would they clean it out? I was hearing that when the bottom box was somewhere about 60% filled, another box should be put in place to avoid swarming.

It's just 4 frames, freeze and store them for next year.  There's always a small risk of them swarming but it's not likely from a package or swarm, unless it's a very strong nuc and already has queen cups when you pick it up. That's why we do inspections.  To me 6 frames drawn isn't enough to add another box.  When 8 are drawn I take the two outside frames and put them in the middle.  As soon as they start drawing those well, I add another hive body.

[The15thMember]

I haven't had an opportunity to watch the inspection video yet, been really busy around here this week, but just based on the conversation, I probably agree with beesnweeds.  At this point, the brood nest is going to continue to condense more and more, and what you are looking to do is have them fill those brood frames with stores as they empty them of brood.  Not so much that they don't have enough room, but I'm assuming in your area you are looking to have that single deep packed for winter.  The fact that you still have some brood is a good sign, but the bees are in compression mode, so you should be too. 

[Terri Yaki]

I haven't had an opportunity to watch the inspection video yet, been really busy around here this week, but just based on the conversation, I probably agree with beesnweeds.  At this point, the brood nest is going to continue to condense more and more, and what you are looking to do is have them fill those brood frames with stores as they empty them of brood.  Not so much that they don't have enough room, but I'm assuming in your area you are looking to have that single deep packed for winter.  The fact that you still have some brood is a good sign, but the bees are in compression mode, so you should be too.

They definitely are reducing numbers and you make me feel better about that. I was wondering what was going on there. Thanks

[Terri Yaki]

And what's this fall flow I've heard about. Where are they going to put that?

[The15thMember]

Do you have a fall flow?  Is it reliable?  Is it strong?  For me, my fall flow is variable and never overly intense, so what I've kind of learned is to just plan like it isn't there.  If it happens, then great, they'll REALLY pack it in.  If not, I may have to feed to get the smaller colonies what they need for winter.  Some of my colonies will have already quit brood rearing when I winterize the hives around Halloween, and I'd like those colonies to have every single frame full of stores if possible (for me that's 16 medium frames per colony).  This means I don't really care if they backfill their brood nest and basically run out of room at the end of flying season, because there is essentially no risk of swarming by then for me.  But your flows and timing could and likely will be a bit different than mine.  And we're not there yet, most of my colonies are in 3-4 mediums right now, but I'm concentrating on keeping them as condensed as possible so the bees can protect their stores against robbers and pests and so any small amount of honey they are still putting up is tightly packed in so they have full frames going into winter.     

[Terri Yaki]

I don't know if we have a fall flow or not. Thanks for the info.

[Michael Bush]

Our fall flow varies from nothing to bumper crop.

[The15thMember]

With some help in the lifting department from my dad, I finally got the honey supers overtop of escape boards in my giant hives.  So I'll be bringing in 5 boxes of honey tomorrow.  Dad did get stung on the arm through his shirt.  Again, one of the hives had some uncapped honey fermenting in the comb, but no sign of beetles.  Not sure why this is happening this year.  Was it just uncapped for too long with not enough bees to efficiently dry it?  Good year for environmental yeasts?       

[Bill Murray]

Yes, Good year for environmental yeasts.

[Terri Yaki]

I went through my nuc hive and my primary hive today. The Nuc just came off of a treatment of formic pro and the queen did survive. The hive is active but I'm thinking that their numbers are low and they have no stores. Here's the video of that.

https://rumble.com/v5bucfp-august-21-2024-nuc-inspection.html

The primary hive looks a little lean but I'm not sure. They do have a medium super pretty full of honey and some scattered around the bottom brood box. I was recommended to remove a deep and a medium and I had intended to do that today but the top brood box has three decent frames of life that I just couldn't bring myself to eliminate. I expect that a hive collapse is forthcoming but I'm not sure how to do it. I will go through my swarm hive tomorrow so I'll have a full overview of my apiary's status.

Should I move those three frames of life over to the nuc? Should I consider splitting the nuc between the primary hive and the swarm hive? I know the latter can't be considered until I inspect the swarm hive and see what's going on in there.

Here are Parts I and II of the main hive inspection. There is a third part but there is nothing of value in it, it's just me cleaing the bees out of the empty super and putting the top back on. Somewhere in there there is some sailor talk when I got stung on my fingertip. If that's a problem, I can remove that link and people can find it on their own accord through my channel if they so desire.

Thanks for any help. And I watch them at 1.5x unless and until I need to see something closer.

Mod Edit: Part 1 has been removed due to language.

https://rumble.com/v5bv44d-august-21-2024-hive-1-inspection-part-ii.html

[The15thMember]

That primary hive has way too much space for how many bees are in there.  I would get them down to one deep plus the full medium.  Just remove some of the frames from the bottom box that aren't fully drawn out or are partially empty and put the nice frames from the second deep in their place.  Freeze the frames you've removed for 24-48 hours to kill any pests and store them in bins or tightly stacked boxes for the winter. 

I'm not sure about the best setup for the nuc, since I have no experience with overwintering nucs, but they will obviously need some sort of food.  Glad to see the treatment wasn't too hard on them.  Remember to do a follow-up mite check to be sure the treatment was effective.         

[Terri Yaki]

OK, thanks. The videos are great for me to look back on and review, they help me see things that I didn't log into my memory when I was inspecting. It does look like I have three frames that I can pull out of the bottom box. Maybe I can move the removed frames over to where some completely empty frames are in the nuc box. I'll review that one too and see if that looks feasible.

[The15thMember]

Hey Terri, I forgot to mention something.  My memory was jogged today when I was working on cleaning up some boxes.  Don't be too aggressive about scraping propolis as the weather turns cooler.  Propolis is bees' caulk, and this time of year they will start to aggressively propolize boxes in preparation for winter, so don't scrape it all off.  They have put it there to help keep themselves warm, along with a host of other benefits.  I'm actually at the point where I only scrape boxes for storage, never when a box is in use, because that stuff is good for the girls.   

[The15thMember]

Dad took the younger kids on a weekend trip, so it was a great day to get uninterrupted work done.  I've got some wax melting in the crock pot, and I spent basically all day cleaning frames and scraping boxes and getting my equipment corner in the garage organized.  I spilled maybe a tablespoon of honey, and as a result had about 100 bees sniffing about while I was working.     

[Terri Yaki]

A little late for the word on the propolis for this event but I'll remember it next time. I hadn't been cleaning it off and things were getting hard to move around.

Anyhow...today it was swarm hive inspection. I was hoping that they would fill two deep boxes with brood but that idea didn't pan out. I have the brood in the bottom box and the top box is getting filled with nectar and honey. At this point, I wish I had a medium up top but it is what it is. I've been feeding them all summer long and it looks to me like they have a good enough supply of stores in the works. Enough that I may even be able to move some over to the nuc box but I'll have to wait a little longer and see. Not stings today, that was nice for a change.

Part I

https://rumble.com/v5c447o-august-23-2024-swarm-hive-inspection-part-i.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp

Part II
https://rumble.com/v5c4kgz-august-23-2024-swarm-hive-inspection-part-ii.html

[The15thMember]

Yeah, I see that about the propolis.    Feel free obviously to remove any propolis on the sides of frames or anywhere that it's keeping you from getting a frame in and out without too much hassle.  Just don't remove any (more) for kicks.  Don't worry though, the bees will likely have replaced all of it by the next inspection.    You just don't want to go on a propolis scraping campaign right before flying weather ends, or they'll be in trouble. 

How much honey do you need to overwinter in your area?  Is overwintering in one deep an option for you?  I think that colony looks like one deep is enough room for them, provided they don't need more honey than that to overwinter successfully.  It's unlikely they'll draw more wax this season, and honestly, I don't know that you want them too, since they will burn through their stores making comb.  I'd put the fullest best honey frames in the bottom box on the outsides of the brood nest and store any extras to give back to them as the brood nest shrinks if needed.         

[Terri Yaki]

If I heard correctly, we need about 60 lbs of honey for a hive through a winter. I am under the impression that a medium 10 frame box weighs about 60 lbs full and a deep weighs about 90. If I am correct on all of that, both my primary hive and my swarm hive should have enough to overwinter but my nuc hive is far from it. I still have some finished comb in my swarm trap that I think I'll move into my nuc hive and start feeding them all of the 2:1 that they'll take.