The next batch of bees to be laid will most likely be the ones who will keep the hive alive through the winter. Bees live about 6 weeks. The main limiter of their lifespan are their fragile wings that get worn out. To help ensure the next batch of bees is good and strong, I wanted to feed the bees some pollen. I made a pollen patty by mixing about 1.5 pounds of sugar with 4 ounces of water. I mixed it up until it made a thick paste and then mixed in 4 ounces of dried pollen. It made a nice thick gooey mess with pollen chunks in it. It looked disgusting. I put a golf ball sized clump in the top bar hive to see if they liked it. The following day, it was completely gone. I guess they approved. I spread the rest out on to wax paper and let it harden in the fridge. One patty went to the most recent split. The other was given to the top bar hive. I plan on making more for the hives over at the community garden.
I inspected the four main hives in the backyard apiary this morning. The split from Hegemone is replacing its queen. From the amount of capped drone cells, I’d say that the previous queen didn’t mate very well. There were a few capped and uncapped queen cells. They haven’t drawn out any more comb and their honey stores were looking a little empty. I removed two frames, one from each the top and bottom box and put the deep frame feeder. I ordered the wrong part from Brushy Moutain and ended up with a deep frame feeder instead of a medium. That should be enough food to keep them going and possibly encourage them to draw out a little bit more comb. I’m not sure if the hive will build up enough to survive a winter. I’m not sure if I’ll combine it with another hive or see if it can survive the winter.
Antheia is strong and doing well. The queen is laying in the bottom two boxes and the third box is mostly capped honey. As the strongest hive in the yard, I think that the hive has been getting most of the syrup from the communal feeding. Since all frames were fully drawn or mostly drawn, I gave the hive back it’s fourth box and pulled a frame of brood up from the second box. They already have plenty of stores for winter, so I’m hoping that they’ll draw more frames that can be given to other hives.
The split with the purchased queen is doing well. They still haven’t fully drawn the second box. I refilled the entrance feeder for the first time since the spring honey flow. The hive is strong enough that robbing shouldn’t be an issue.
Hegemone is doing well. I found some cocoons on the outside under the outer cover and on the bottom of the hive below the screened bottom. Could possibly be wax moth, but I’ll never know because I crushed them all. I saw a hornet snatch a bee off the top of the hive. My attempts to burn the hornet with the butane torch failed and it flew off.
I wanted to keep feeding the top bar hive without the flaws of using the screen. I bought a 2.75″ hole drill bit. This is the size needed for a regular mouth jar. It’s a very snug fit, so its best to either widen the hole with a file or use the drill to widen the hole a little bit.
I planned on inspecting most of the hives today, but ended up only opening the Nuc on a Top Bar Hive. I built the hive based upon the plans provided by Michael Bush. When using the hive in such a way that there is not a solid top to keep the rain out, it works fine as is. I wasn’t able to provide a solid roof to the hive because of the Nuc sitting on top of the front half of the hive. This wasn’t so bad, as the only entrances for water were the gaps between the first and second frames that served as the entrance to the hive.
The real problem was when I decided to feed the bees using an inverted jar. I took an entrance moving screen, laid it across the hive in place of a few top bars and then put the inverted jar on that. It gave easy access to the jar for the bees, but kept them behind the screen to allow me to refill the jar without crushing bees. There were a few issues with that. The bees kept climbing on to the top of the screen, which made it impossible to replace the jar without crushing bees and it provided a nice big opening for rain to get in to the hive. The inverted jar prevent the plywood from covering the screen. My original plan was to get a drill bit the size of the jar tops and use a piece of wood to prevent water from getting in. I never found the time to make that happen, so I cut corners.
End result was that all this rain that we’ve gotten in the past to weeks made its way in to the hive and had no place to go, so it just sat there. There was about 2-3 inches of water in the bottom of the hive with many dead bees floating in it. It smelled disgusting. I ran and got my drill with a 3/8″ bit to put a few drainage holes in to the hive. I then spent the next 30-45 minutes scooping out the dead bees and using the hive tool as a squeegee. The cardboard follower had to be tossed and this explains why there was always a mass of bees on the screen. They were desperately trying to dry out the hive.
The main lesson to be learned from this is that you should always assume that water will find its way in to the hive and it needs a way to drain out.
Due to a mini vacation and rain, it has been over a week since I last fed the bees in the backyard. Today’s weather forecast was clear so I mixed them up a fresh batch of syrup. It took almost an hour before any bees were at the feeder and despite them having a few hours to rally the girls to come clean up, they are mostly ignoring it. There are at most a few dozen bees at the feeder at any moment. There are still 5 hives in the yard, so I would expect more bees than that. The Goldenrods are in bloom, so the Fall honey flow might be in full swing.
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