August Inspection

 Date 08-10-2013
Weather: PC, hot, humid, thunder

Both hives seem to be doing good. Didn't see the queen in either, but did see eggs, larvae, capped brood - all the good signs. I just hope they will get built up enough to make it through the winter.

Special thanks to McCartney Taylor at learningbeekeeping.com for the tip on using the hair clips. I used quite a few in hive #1 while doing the cutout.

Hive #1

 In hive #2,  I just laid the brood comb in the back of the hive, similar to what Les Crowder showed in his book which I highly recommend, along with his DVD.

Hive #2

Both methods work, and both have pros and cons. I will probably use them both again if I do any more cutouts.

After the Cutout

I have inspected the two top bar hives from the cutout I did and #2 had eggs, so it looks like I got the queen. #1 had a lot of nectar, but no eggs (of course), so I purchased a queen from a local beek and installed her Friday (05-31). I will hopefully have time to check her Wednesday before church and make sure she is released. The #2 hive started cross-combing, so I borrowed an empty comb from #1 to try to steer them in the right direction and give the queen something to lay in. We'll see how they do maybe this weekend.

Weekend Cutout

Finally. After a long season without bees, I got a new start. My cousin's husband called me some time last year and asked about getting some bees out of a house that they owned. It was late in the year, so I told them if it was ok to wait until this spring and I would be glad to get them out.

This Spring has been very wet and cold, so I had to wait until this past weekend to try it. On Friday (05-24-2013), around 11am after work, I began. After checking several places, we finally found them in the floor joists over the carport and under an upstairs bedroom.

It was 2pm before I even got started extracting the hive, and shortly thereafter, my son came by to give much needed help. We didn't finish on Friday, so I was back out Saturday morning to finish it up.

I wound up splitting the hive into two top bar hives, and I don't know if I got the queen in either box. In box #1, I'm quite sure they have resources to make a queen, but in #2, I don't recall any eggs or larvae, just capped brood.

Ants were a problem the first day at home in both hives, and in hive #1 yesterday. Hive #1 also suffered mild robbing on Monday. I think I'll take a look at them today and see how they are.

A short vid of the project is here.

Update

Been a while since an update, and still not much to post, except I plan to do some cutouts this spring and hopefully get back into watching these magnificent bees. We will see what happens.