Day 30/31: Hive INSPECTIONS

Thirty days in and there is good and not-so-good news…

Boathouse

The Boathouse bees have filled the medium we put on there and it really amazed us how quickly they did that. So that’s the good news. We figure there is between 35 and 40 pounds of honey in there – most of it is capped and ready to be extracted.

The Boathouse bees still have frames with a really nice brood pattern on them, so again that’s good news.

I expected with the medium full of honey and the brood box pretty full that they would be moving fast on the Flow frames, especially since this seems to be a fairly strong hive… But when it comes to the Flow hive, they are in there poking around, but don’t seem to be putting wax or honey in yet.

After much deliberation at home after the inspection, we decided to put the medium on top of the Flow hive to encourage the bees to walk through the flow hive more and see if that might make them more comfortable with it.

We also decided based on the advice of a mentor, to add another super up top just in case…. No sense missing any honey just because they don’t like the hives we bought!

The next issue this raises is – how to extract?

We had purchased the Flow hives hoping to avoid the cost/hassle of extraction equipment and a honey house. We hear that it’s not great to borrow equipment or even purchase used equipment due to the potential biosecurity risks that sharing equipment introduces.

So we are going to have to think about that for a bit… But we may not have long as we are now out of boxes because again, we expected to be pulling honey out of the flow hive not storing it in supers…

Barracks

The Barracks bees don’t seem to be doing quite as well.

When we first arrived, they seemed to be bearding on the side of the hive. This apparently can signal that it’s too hot in the hive. Maybe we should have painted these a lighter colour? Or provided an umbrella? That said, it’s been unseasonably hot this summer, and I doubt we’ll see that many days of straight heat in a row for a while (30 degrees C + for most of July!). If they can get through this, they can get through anything, right?

Their medium was only about 60% full, though the comb is all built out so that is progress from the last time we were there for sure.

The frames of brood don’t look like the Boathouse ones in that they are more spotty, and there seem to be more patches of bigger larvae in with smaller and with capped brood (more mixed up frames).

They are also wandering around the flow frames but not yet depositing anything in there.

And we had a lot of issues closing this hive up as the bees were out in full force all along the edges. Definitely unintentionally killed some bees even with the smoker, the bee brush and moving very slowly.

Not knowing what to do about all of this, we decided to take the same approach as the Boathouse hive, (swapping the flow and the medium, and adding another deep) and check in later in the week. This way at least we’ll be able to compare their responses…