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

[The15thMember]

I inspected a split today looking for a mated queen, which I found.  I also inspected two of my mammoth colonies, adding a 7th box to one.  Thankfully, it seems the bramble honey is curing pretty quickly, so I was able to pull one super and replace it with a fresh one in the other colony, so they are still at 6, which I can manage on my own.  I'll have to get my dad to help me with the 7-box hive, next time I need to go in there.  Got my first taste of honey straight from the hive this year, and I'll be harvesting my first 11 frames tomorrow, after the supers have cleared. 

[Caashenb]

Today I checked on colony status and to my surprise I had to put a third deep super on six colonies.

This is only my fourth year of keeping bees but this is the first year I have seen a flow like we have now. This has been a great spring with plenty of rain and moderate temps.

[Bill Murray]

I bought the nicest boxes for the littlest amount ever, they had dovetails cut in them. Ill never go back again.

[The15thMember]

I've learned the hard way that at least finger joints are a must in my climate.  I bought some boxes a few years ago that don't have them and they are SO warped already. 

[Terri Yaki]

All I did today was observe and what I saw was my nuc hive coming and going but not bringing in any pollen. They don't look like they've coming in heavy either. What could they be up to? My swarm hive is bringing in yellow pollen but I don't know what it's from. I kind of looks like fuchsia on the pollen chart but I don't know if we have any of that around here. It could also be jewelweed, I've seen stuff that looks kind of like it around but now I have to look closer.

[The15thMember]

Our jewelweed isn't even close to blooming, so I doubt yours is.  The question is if your flow is really strong right now or not.  The speed at which the colonies are drawing comb, now that you have stopped feeding, will be a good indicator of that. 

[Terri Yaki]

How frequently should I be inspecting right now? It's been a week since I checked the hive. I was planning on a ten day inspection this time around.

[The15thMember]

10 days is totally fine.  Even longer would be.  For a newbee, I'd probably recommended roughly every 2 weeks.  Just to give you a gauge, I inspect any given colony about once every three weeks, and that's not always a full inspection.  Since it's your first season, you don't want to let them go too long because you don't have a lot of information in your playbook yet, but by the same token, weekly inspections are probably more work for them than the information is worth to you.  Just my 2 cents.           

[Bill Murray]

So if your feeding 1:1 and getting comb drawn every 7-10 days, if your flow is on and not feeding/not doing anything for swarm control ,every 7 days. If your flow is on and doing swarm control--based on your swarm control method.

I know this might sound crazy but after march 1st all I look for is if they need super space and imirie shims till July.

This year was a little crazy they wanted to back-fill and go into swarm mode, so being flexible is always important. Sometimes those insects just dont do what you want/need/or expect them to do

[NigelP]

I inspect approx every 6  days this time of the year. In the UK  it's peak swarming time at the moment and I do not want to loose all my work force. You can loose your current queen and a lot of your bees if you go to 10 day inspections during swarm season. Later in the year I inspect less frequently, but am sometimes caught out by a late colony swarming. But as I now clip my queens wings I only loose the queen and not the workforce (and sometimes I even get the queen back, if the emerging swarm has settled underneath the hive floor).

[Ben Framed]

Practical commmon sense Beekeeping! Thanks for posting this!

Phillip

[Michael Bush]

In my home yard, because of queen rearing, I'm in most hives most days.  In the outyards I get into them about once a month.  Once I put supers on I only get into them for queen rearing.

[Terri Yaki]

I went through my nuc hive this morning. I'm apparently out of memory on my computer so I need to get some stuff off of it before I can add more videos to it. But anyway, here's what I did. I had medium on the bottom with a deep on top of it. Last week (8 days ago) I added a deep to the top of those, with the goal of having them in two deeps plus any supers. I wanted to (and did today) move the medium from the bottom to the top with a queen excluder underneath it. That medium and the first deep are fully utilized but the top deep has not hardly been touched. I can see very light outlines of some comb building. I took four frames with plastic foundation out of my garage and painted them with more wax to see if it helps any and put them in the box in exchange for other empties. So now I have deep on the bottom full of brood, eggs, and stores. A deep on top of that with all empty frames and the medium full of brood, eggs and stores on the top over a queen excluder. I did find the queen and she is now in the bottom box. Was any of this a mistake?

[The15thMember]

None of that raises any red flags for me.  So just to clarify, the bees had drawn out and filled that whole deep and medium?  That's awesome!  That tells me your flow is quite strong.  I don't use QXes, so I can't offer any advice on that front. 

[Terri Yaki]

Thanks. I was more worried about that completely empty deep on the middle being an issue. The queen excluder will prevent any more brood in the medium and I expect and believe it will be converted to a honey super. I guess what concerns me is that once that bottom deep is full of eggs, there is no comb in the upper box for her to lay them in. Will they move stores from the bottom box to the top and make room?

[The15thMember]

I'm not sure how much they will rearrange to accommodate more brood (no QX experience), but I'd imagine they'll just draw out the new deep and she can lay in there.   

[Terri Yaki]

How quickly can they draw that out?

[The15thMember]

You'd be surprised when the flow is strong.  I mean, they drew out the whole medium in 8 days, right?  It will only be a day or two until there is more space for her to lay at that rate. 

[Terri Yaki]

That makes me feel better. I figured a way around my memory shortage and got the videos up. There are three parts to this one for anyone who's interested but I only have one or two questions at this point. In the second video at about the 9:00 mark, there looks to be a charged queen cell. I'd like input on that and I had an entrance reducer in with two entrances about 3" wide on each end of it. On one end, they were using it for fanning and the other end was getting clogged up with traffic pretty bad so I just removed it altogether. If that's a mistake, let me know.

https://rumble.com/v4ypfy6-may-31-2024-hive-inspection-part-i.html

https://rumble.com/v4ypszk-may-31-2024-hive-inspection-part-ii.html

https://rumble.com/v4yqfhb-may-31-2024-hive-inspection-part-iii.html

[The15thMember]

I watched the first two parts (just ran out of time for the third).  I knew all but one song on the radio.    I was confused, I thought this was the swarm you were talking about before.  You said nuc, I was just distracted and didn't read your post properly (we had a lot going on around here this morning), so sorry about that.  That makes me a little less enthusiastic about the speed at which they are drawing, but I still think that empty deep in the middle is fine.  They looked like they needed the additional room, and putting that in the middle should encourage them to work it.  I also think removing the entrance reducer is fine at this point.  How big was the larva in the queen cell?  Or was it just an egg?  A single charged cell is risky to remove, as they may just be superseding the queen, not swarming, but on the other hand, they are building a lot of cups and they seem to have plenty of other eggs to choose from at the moment.  Since you have the swarm to fall back on if something goes wrong, you could take it down and see if they charge more.  It depends on your goals and whether you'd rather risk losing a swarm or risk them going queenless.