SHB trapping, moves and some new little friends..

As you know I've been trying to keep up with the SHB plague I've been experiencing.  So far, on a pretty regular pattern (4 to 5 days) I've been replacing the traps in my hives.  I've been doing this because they are almost full.  Here's the count, so far ..

H1 - I moved it the other day to a sunnier place.  I have 2 traps in it, and it is a single deep hive box at this time.  It is location in it's new location, close to H4.  Whenever I moved it, I placed some branches in front to cause the bees to re-orient, and have noticed them doing this over the last couple of days so I'll probably remove some more branches and let them settle in.

I'm also going to reduce the entrance some, probably to about 3 inches or so just to keep them 'current' with their new location.  I didn't see any clustering at the old location, by where H2 and Nuc-bomb was - so if any returned there, they either found their way back - or drifted to the other boxes.

H2 - It is a double-deep brood box and I have 3 traps in it.

H3 (the nuc bomb box) has suffered quite a reduction from 3 deeps, down to 2 deep due to the massive infestation I had in it.  It currently has 4 traps in it.

H4 - new split hive.  This hive was created from H1 bee stock.  It has been slow to start, but seems to be coming along.  I've been feeding it reguraly, and now have a gallon feeder with sugar water on it and that has delayed the need for me to replace the quart-feeder every few days.  It has had the 1-gallon feeder on it for about a week now, and there's about 2" of feed left in it.  I'll have to check it this weekend and be sure that they don't become honey-bound.

Nuc box - this is a double-stacked 4-frame box.  It has been fed continuously for about 3 weeks now and shows some progress in production.  As you might remember, this NUC is from H1 also, and I accidently moved the marked queen over whenever I supplimented some brood stock.  It has 1 trap in it.

I received my Nematodes a couple of days ago and just got a chance to put them in last night.  After you mix, and 'dissolve' the solution up into a 5-gallon bucket you can't really see anything.  I mixed/stirred up the solution every time I put some out 'liquid' out - so we'll see how well things go.  The directions say to apply to a 'wet' ground or water in after so I did this, with another 5-gallons of water, and we also got some good rain so that should help.  I believe the instructions say that you should expect some results, (how do i really measure this anyway) starting within a week and going forward.  The solution was split between both locations of my apiary. 

Depending on how well the move works, I'll start moving the other hives and Nuc over to their new locations over the next several weeks.  This weekend I'll be replacing some more traps and need to go through all the hives well to check on their brood status and also since I've been feeding for several weeks - check their honey stocks to be sure they aren't causing any queen-laying issues.

more later ..