Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Strong Hive

I went in this evening with my jacket and veil and gloves to check out the stronger of the two hives.  I really wanted to check and make sure they were not preparing to swarm.  The last couple of times I've checked this hive, I've been stung...which is why I am going in with protection this time.

The hive does seem to be going quite well.  All of the frames in the two brood boxes have lots of activity.  One thing I did accomplish on the 7th was to remove the queen excluder to encourage the bees to begin drawing out comb in the honey super.  A quick glance in at the frames show that this strategy appears to have worked.  They are drawing out the comb nicely and I can even see a small amount of honey being collected.  The picture below shows all the activity atop the honey super.


In this inspection I took the entire hive apart to get at the bottom-most bottom board.  I had this in place to hold the varroa mite counting board...but I think it is hindering ventilation which can induce the bees to swarming.  I removed this board and quickly placed the bottom box back into place.  The bees really did not like that this box was moved!  I am really glad I wore the veil and gloves!  Below is a picture of the hive without its brood boxes...not really a hive anymore.  But it shows the slatted rack (which is supposed to help improve ventilation and gives the bees the feeling of more room to reduce the desire to swarm).  Beneath the slatted rack is the screened bottom board which is used for mite control.  Mites fall off the bees and through the screen where they can't climb back onto bees.  Then under this is the regular bottom board...which is what I removed.  So now the mites will fall through the screen and into the grass below.


Here are a couple pictures showing the number of bees in this hive...most of the frames were as full as this...

Here is what the hive looked like in between each frame check...I had to use a lot of smoke to clear them enough to take out the next frame...

To top off this wonderful inspection, guess what I found???
I did not have time to go into the other hive...I will give it a couple more days and will check to see if the supercedure cells appear to be working. 

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