Saturday, September 26, 2015

Twenty four hours later and the grass is gone

Thursday evening Sept 24, 2015: So I went to the hives with my flashlight of my iPhone at 7pm (yes it's getting darker earlier) and they had removed the grass from Hive A and there appeared to be mainly drones ~ a dozen lying about in the grass and on the landing board. They were alive but just hanging out - languid really.

Hive B had pulled most of the grass out.

Today, Saturday Sept 26, just checked them and Hive B will need more syrup this afternoon, I'll wait until it's warmer out.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Robbing?

So the more I thought about the video of the tall/strong hive, the more I thought that might be robbing behavior so last night (Wednesday Sept 23) at 10pm, in the dark, in the drizzle, I went out and plugged the entrances to the hive with some grass just leaving 2 small openings in each to give the girls a better chance at defending their hives.

I'll keep you posted!

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Tuesday Sept 22, 2015 Put the empty box back under the hives

So after much intellectual teeth gnashing I went out this morning before the rain, and put the empty box below my weak or 2 box hive but WHOA was it heavy to lift those top two boxes!!  So that's a good sign of how much honey is in the two boxes, and still taking syrup down!

As you recall, I have 4 boxes on the "strong" hive and I decided to put one box back under - remember we removed 2 boxes three days ago. Anyway, no way could I lift those top 2 boxes, so Mark hefted them, which exposed some honey. YIKES.  Then I pulled the bottom 2 boxes (not as heavy) and then I replaced an empty box and stacked the other four back on.

Now there is LOTS of activity outside that hive - I hope I did not stimulate robbing behavior.

Here are the videos of the activity this afternoon:


Monday, September 21, 2015

Removed bottom boxes Week 23

The local beekeepers group from Hastings came out to see my hives. We opened the weaker hive but Tom says it has plenty of bees and the capped honey looks good, so we removed the bottom empty box and I will keep feeding them.

That was on Sept 19 and today Sept 21, the bees were bringing in lots of orange pollen.

We also removed the bottom two empty boxes on the stronger hive, so it is 4 boxes deep.

Here are photos from this weekend - bees still on the goldenrod:




Tuesday, September 15, 2015

September 15 2015 Week 22 Still feeding and a "pipping" queen

Over the weekend, I refilled the feeder jars and today they were ~1/2 full.
Two days ago, I watched workers remove larvae from the strong hive:

Here's the video of them:


I heard a pipping noise today in the weak hive and I think it was the queen!!
I can't believe I really heard it but I've never heard a noise like that before.

Thursday, September 3, 2015

Feeding frenzy Sept 3, 2015 week 20 1/2

The feeders were nearly empty so I filled the jars completely today!
That's all for my update.

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

Update September 1, 2015 week 20

Here's a picture of a cool spider in my raspberry patch - Argiope aurantia or Black and Yellow Garden Spider
And some videos: I checked the feeders on hive 2 and they were empty so I refilled them.


The bees are all over the golden rod which is EVERYWHERE on our land:

And here is a video link to the videos of each hive:
https://youtu.be/dFFL7M5YPSQ