I saw bees gathering on Hive A and sent pictures to experts - Jim Kloek at Nature's Nectar and David Heaf et al in the UK - and they all thought it was a swarm or secondary swarm.
Well by evening (this was last Sunday) it was smaller and Monday it was gone!
so if they did swarm, I missed it.
But there are still bees working the combs so I'm not sure what else to do at this point.
I do not have feeders on that hive, though I did put some pollen patties on that are almost gone as of yesterday.
People in the UK group did comment on the fact that I have too many boxes on and they thought they were full of honey. But as stated, when I tried to take off the top box, there was capped pollen at the bottom of the middle combs so I only took out one comb on the edge and replaced the top bar there. That was before this "swarm" phenomenon.
I had so many boxes on because they have comb filling 4 boxes then the next box doesn't have a window so to make sure they had plenty of room and "didn't swarm" (nice thought anyway), I had the 6th box on (windowed) for insurance. They have started one comb in there so I thought it was smart to give them the room.
I'm going to wait until the end of June or July, I guess, to try to remove the top two boxes - if it looks like they're filling the bottom one.
I honestly wish I could just transplant David Heaf over here to get me through a season of this because it feels like trial and error (more error) as I try to leave them alone to do their thing. OR I wish there was a group of Warre beekeepers around SE Minnesota.
Hive B is still eating its syrups (1:1) and pollen is nearly gone but the nectar flow is about to start so I'll take the feeders off this week.
The secondary swarm (Cast) was larger in the morning:
No comments:
Post a Comment