December 11, 2015 On November 7th, we had the candy party (details and pictures to come in a post from someone else — hint, hint Todd). I used about 100 lbs of sugar to make candy for 4 full colonies, 1 2-medium-box colony and 1 nuc. I filled 1/2 of […]
8/9 what’s difference a week makes! The queen castle is robbed out and the observation hive is well provisioned! 8/11 made a nuc from the orange hive to mate queen from Q7. To Mel’s to pick up queen — she’s dead. 8/13 Observation hive – Small hive beetle! Argh! […]
On August 11, I was expecting to house a queen from the Q7 round of queen rearing. I made up a 4 frame medium nuc from my orange colony (the primary swarm from the observation hive). When I went to pick up the queen, she was dead. Darn. The nuc […]
Q7 queens were installed in several hives amongst the group. Liz’ nuc that received a Pauw was abandoned after all. Last Sunday, Mel set up another nuc. Mel and I went to the farm to see if any of the reserve queens had emerged. We found one Pauw and one […]
7/17 Pink – 5 frames drawn; 3 frames brood; queen with red mark seen Green – 7 frames drawn; 5 frames brood; queen with red mark seen Orange – 27 frames drawn; top box empty – removed; middle box 3 frames stores 5 frames brood and eggs; bottom box mostly […]
Q7 was started on Sunday, July 26th, 2015. I used the same nurse hive as for Q4 and Q6 at the farm: bottom deep with open brood, queen and foragers. On that a queen excluder and the cloak board. On that the second deep with capped brood (about 4 frames […]
Yeah, again! After the swarm there are at least 3 virgin queens roaming the colony: A solid gold one that is pretty much chill. She moves slowly and has very few bees in her retinue. The bees seem to pretty much ignore her. […]
I set up the same nurse hive that was at the farm and was used for Q4 with the cloak board. I had learned at the MSBA meeting this summer to be sure to put only capped brood in the box above the queen excluder and to shake all the […]
Well I’m bummed. I decided to pull my supers today. The process went fine. The fume board worked like a charm even though the juice is about three years old. I removed the third super which I put on about a month ago to be sure the hive wouldn’t swarm. […]
On Sunday June 28, Kristien set up the colony at the farm with the cloak board. Special attention was paid to have only capped brood in the cell finishing box and make sure all the open brood was in the bottom box. On June 30th, we met a Kristien’s and […]
