Backyard Apiary

Spider with a bee corpse

I mixed up a large batch of 2:1 (40 lbs sugar, 20 lbs water) syrup for my three hives at the Garner community garden. Next time I’ll need to do 50 lbs of sugar to completely fill all of the feeders. Two of the hives were small swarms. During the last inspection, they had barely started to fill their second box. Today’s inspection showed that all three hives were doing well. They all had drawn out more frames and the right most hive even had 4 frames of capped honey in the top box. I only had enough sugar to fill half the feeder for this hive. I feel strongly that this hive will survive the winter. It’s already has a decent amount of stores and a several frames of capped brood in the bottom box. The hive has a screened top with a spider “foraging” on the screen. I managed to get a picture of it dragging around a bee corpse.

The middle hive had me worried after first removing the inner cover. Just like last time, there were a few wax moth larvae and a small hive beetle crawling around in the empty feeder. This prompted a full inspection. I didn’t see any signs of either in the hive. I guess the bees ignore the pests in the feeder because it’s separated from the hive.

I’ll need to bring an inner cover and two trays to start closing up the hives for winter.

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.