A full day of beekeeping chores today, seemed like it would never end. Assembled 3 boxes, 16 frames, painted 5 boxes, then went through the Metropolis and Other boxes....
Here's one of the weird half-sheet of foundation frames that Albinas hives came with. Cheaper, and the bees will fill in the rest of the comb as normal, apparently. Thing is, I reckon they'll get a lot more drone comb if you encourage them to freestyle down there....
Box-drying rack out the front drive.
Fixing foundation to frames. I find the soldering iron easy and simple, just get it hot and drag it over the wire, with a bit of pressure .
Melts in nice.
This girl came over to inspect the painting session.
After all that, time to play with the bees.
Both these boxes have swarmed recently, I think. The plan is to get another box on top of each, these will hopefully fill up with honey soon. Both of these doubles are pretty full last i checked, although the swarming would have weakened them, slowed down their work-rate with the population exodus, new queen rearing, and all that goes with it.
Under the mat, Metropolis
Lots of capped honey in there, but not fully harvestable yet.
Lots of 3/4 full frames in the top box.
Still quite a bit of brood on some of the frames, though, which means do not harvest yet...
Still quite a bit of brood on some of the frames, though, which means do not harvest yet...
I mixed some of the full frames into the new top box, to encourage them to go up there, some empty ones into the middle box..
Inside 'Other'.
Honey raining down from the broken comb.
2 weeks ago in this box exactly the same thing, so I scraped it all out again.
Very messy, honey everywhere.
Collected the comb
Triple deckers.
Fill em' up!
Oops, got stung. once each hand. Fernergulin tablet.
++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++
STING TALLY:
Jonas : 9 (7 this season)
Adrian : 0
Edis : 1
++++++++++++++ ooooooooooooo ++++++++++++++
lots of bees got trapped in the comb I scraped, soaked with honey
Licking each other clean.
Those white dots on my jeans are bee stings, lodged in the fabric.
Found them as I was geting changed.
I think I actually got stung by one of these, twenty minutes after it had been left in my pants...!
Found them as I was geting changed.
I think I actually got stung by one of these, twenty minutes after it had been left in my pants...!
That could have been very painful.
I reckon for every time I get stung, there must be at least 20 attempts..
Hi Jonas! Absolutely love reading your blog!! So interesting and the photo's are amazing!! I am a new beekeeper and at the moment only have one hive,with another on order for Nov! I found that my queen excluder ( metal one) got so much comb on it, the bees were struggling to get into the top box. It is also a bugger to clean! So I have removed it and hope that the bees will do full frames of honey without it?? My bees have been a slow to get going so far. I requeened at the end of Sept (nothing really wrong with the old queen, just that they had made her so I was unsure of her quality) and still the brood box has plenty of space?? There is a fair bit of brood but I really expected them to be busier??? I have them in Mansfield Vic, so maybe in colder weather it takes them longer to get going??
ReplyDeleteIt really is a great hobby and is fairly hit and miss in my case!!!
Keep the blogs coming...they help to reassure me!!!!
Cheers
Hey ibeka, glad you like the blog, I find it's a great way for me to keep track of where things are in each hive over time. They say you should take notes of what's going on, when you re-queen, etc...the blog thing is easier for me...
ReplyDeleteI reckon your queen is still young and warming up to the task ,she'll come good in time. If she laid her first eggs in late Sep then they'll only be emerging now, I guess. And sometimes they are just not that busy. I hear about people getting 'honey flow', when a box fills up in a week, but it aint happened to us yet. I think queen excluders are good, but lots of people don't use them, it just gets tricky when you want to spin the honey and there is stil brood in it.
Anyway, good luck! Jonas