A tale of two hives

 
  I opened the Sicilain hive and observed that there were not that many bees up in the honey super, and had done absolutely nothing to the frames. Yet when I opened the Italians, I was presently surprised to see it full of bees. I was even more pleased to notice that the Italian bees are well on their way to filling theirs. I would estimate it is roughly a third to a half full with honeycomb. I think we might even be able to stack another super on in a week or two. So with a quick conference call with Bob it was mutually decided to peel the now propolis encrusted queen excluder off the Sicilian hive.

 I am quickly learning that hives are complex and unpredictable and that there seems to be no real hard and fast rules to beekeeping, in a sense Bob and I were both right and wrong about the excluders.

 Sadly the Carniolans have become a footnote in the report. They have gone through a little more of their sugar water and I didn't care to inspect them, there is even less coming and going from the entrance.

 John

Skipping an inspection

With a hectic schedule and darkening skies, we decided to call off our hive inspection this week. However, I felt it was worthy of a blog update. This is because even though there really wasn't any pressing reason to see what was going on inside the hives, it is worth pointing out that many advocates of natural beekeeping believe the less intrusions into the hive, the less the bees are disrupted from doing what they do best, i.e., collecting honey. It certainly makes sense when you stop to think about it. We figured that the Carniolan numbers are so low now we are sure that the almost full jar or sugar syrup we saw last inspection couldn't have been depleted in one week. The Italians hadn't built on to the frames of the honey super in the last inspection, so it was doubtful that in one week they had built it up and filled it with honey. The same goes for the Sicilians, too. Besides, both hives look really busy. Yup, we can wait another week.

John

A quick update

John took a peek into the supers yesterday as he had seen massive activity outside the 1st Italians the day before, triggering some concern about the hive kicking off a swarm due to overcrowding.  If there was an overcrowding issue, then we figured we needed to add more supers to give them some room.  I must admit some "bummerness" that neither Italians had done much in the supers, but were both working the frames in them.  While I am getting great pleasure out of wrangling 130,000 or so of head of bees, I am in it for the honey and would love to have a bumper crop this year. 

One thing to note, it appears that the perpendicular excluder issue was a good idea - or at least not a bad idea.  We placed the excluders on Monday and they were already starting to work the frames by Thursday.  The worker bees seem to be undeterred by the screens, so we just have to wait and see if we find eggs to see if the queen avoids the area or not.

A bit silly to think so and over-optimistic, but I can dream, right?

Bob