June Frame

June Frame

Friday, August 9, 2013

Tuesday and Thursday ..

The first Tuesday of the month is the local bee keepers meeting and I wanted to try and get into the hives to check their trap status' before the meeting and quickly look for anything else that I might need to talk about before the meeting. 

I quickly rushed home after work and even though I was 'starving' dived into the hives to check out what was going on.  I only had to replace 4 traps this week as I found that most of the traps only had about 10 to 20 SHB in them.  This was an encouraging note, but I don't believe I've solved the issue I'm having - just possibly started to see a decline - at least for now.  Heck .... I'll take any improvement I can get. 

Hive status -

H2 - Nuc bomb -

I noticed allot of the male (smaller and brown in color) inside the top cover and in any of the other hives.  Strange, but maybe the word had gotten out that there was a 'batchler party' in this hive .... :)  I killed about 40 or so beetles (85% were males) in this hive whenever I took the cover off.  I've learned to quickly remove the cover and be prepared to kill with my fingers, instead of the hive tool - partially because of the satisfaction I get from it - and the other reasoning is that I'm faster getting them this way before they scurry off to some place other.  It's still being maintained in 2 deep boxes and although I didn't have time to go into the bottom deep, I did notice 3-4 new brood frames and am encouraged by this fact.  I'll have to check the bottom box real good this weekend to see what's going on down there.

H3 -

I noticed several new frames of brood and think the queen is still producing well in here - so far.  This is the hive that I swapped a frame of brood from H-1 about 40 days after getting the new package this year.  More about this hive below..

H1 -

This is the hive that I moved over to the new location.  I had removed the 'cover' from the front a couple of days after moving it and it seems to be doing fine in this location.  No significant change in SHB that I could tell, but no drastic reduction either.  There was some more brood here also, but not much.

H4 - The new (split) hive

This hive is one I created from a split off of H1, and is in the same (sunnier) location where H1 is now.  If I remember correctly, there is only about 7 frames in here and it's still growing slowly.  I might have to reduce its box but not sure yet.  I've been feeding it with quarts every 3 days or so, but switched to a gallon feeder.  I refilled the feeder as it had been a day or so already empty and will try to monitor it's hive-growth rate to make sure they are drawing more frames and not just filling them honey.

Nuc box -

I didn't have time to go into it and will do that this weekend.  I did "add to" the quart top feeder as they had only taken about 3/4 of it.  I don't know why they've slowed down but will investigate this weekend to see what's actually going on.

Wednesday - 8/7 - H-3 Move

I decided to move H-3 over to the sunnier place to see how it would do.  I did the same process, with partially blocking the entrance to force their re-orientation process, reducing their entrance -  and they seem to be doing well - as of last night.  I'll remove more of their 'coverage' tonight and leave their entrance restricted for another day or so depending on how they're doing.

I'll post more after the weekend whenever I know more.  Other than that, I've started clearing a larger area close to the original hive locations and have made some headway.  I've already hauled 1 trailer of trash to the dump, and almost filled another trailer.  I'll hopefully be hauling the partially filled off this weekend, and get another filled.  I think I have probably another 5 to 6 before I finish clearing what I want to at this time.  Hopefully I can get this quickly done and get the saw tooth trees I've purchased in the ground for this fall.  I also want to add some more fruit trees also - and .....


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