Mark and I visited our bees on October 22 to make sure they were set for the upcoming winter season. We came prepared to add more sugar water to any hives that might need it, so that the bees would have extra food for the next few months. However, the hives seemed to be in good shape with their honey stores, so we decided to remove all of the top hive feeders from the hives. (Click on photos below to enlarge).
Hive 01 had plenty of bees, although we did not see the queen, nor did we see much brood. We are nervous about the future of this hive, but there is nothing we can do to save the hive. Queens are very hard to come by at this time of year and that is what is needed to keep this hive going. We will wait and see what happens.
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| Hive 01 bees, but no queen was found. |
Hive 02 also did not have a queen and the population was very low. We combined hive 02 with hive 03 to save what bees remained. We did this by placing a deep hive box on top of hive 03 and situated a sheet of newspaper between the boxes. Mark cut slits into the newspaper to give the bees a head start in chewing their way into the bottom box to join the hive 03 bees. This process takes a couple of days and gives time for the bees in the top box to "reposition their GPS" so that when they exit the hive to forage, they will return to hive 03 instead of searching for their former home.
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| We combined hive 02 bees with hive 03 bees. |
Hive 03 is doing great. Notice the tiny eggs and larvae below.
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| Many new eggs, larvae and capped brood in hive 03 |
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| The hive 03 queen is at the center of the photo, marked with a white dot on her thorax. |
Hive 04 houses our Buckfast queen. She has never let us down since we have had her in this hive.
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Hive 04 top hive feeder was empty and the sugar water was put to good use.
We decided that the hive is in great shape with their honey stores and we no longer
need to supplement their diet, so we removed the feeder. |
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| Hive 04 eggs and larvae. |
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| Hive 04 capped brood surrounded on the sides and at the top by honey stores. |
The hive 05 queen is keeping things going in her colony.
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Notice the queen near the middle of the photo. She is larger
than the other bees and an apricot color. |
Hive 06 is doing well. There is a lot of eggs, larvae and brood.
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| Hive 06 frame full of capped brood. |
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| Hive 06 larvae and eggs. |
The queen in hive 08 is also doing great. We have been very proud of her as well. She seems to lay the most eggs of all of our queens.
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| Hive 08 queen surrounded by new eggs and larvae. |
We removed the top hive sugar water feeds from all of the hives and set the pontoons on top of the hive boxes for the bees to lick them clean.
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Pontoons sitting atop the hives so foraging bees can drink up the remaining
sugar water droplets. |
As it stands now, we no longer have bees in hive numbers 02 and 07. The rest of the colonies seem to be doing very well, except for hive 01. We will watch hive 01 closely.
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| End of the day at the bee yard. |
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