Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Hive #1 reduced

Finally I was able to reduce hive #1 to one deep and a medium.
I went in yesterday.  There was still brood and eggs in the medium as well as the queen.  She has no black on her abdomen- a golden queen.  There was honey and a little brood in the top deep.  The bottom deep had empty comb with a very small amount of honey.  I took three frames with the youngest wax from the bottom and switched them into the then top deep.
The bottom box was in need of repairs and cleaning.  Most of the frames have old, black wax and will be scraped.
My helpers cleaning the honey off of the frames

Friday, October 12, 2018

Fall update

Much has happened since the last posting.  I will try to keep it short.
#2 did not make it.  The two boxes never combined and the hive was robbed.  It has been dismantled and awaits bees next year.
Olea's continues to be strong on its 7 bars.  On one inspection, I saw no honey so started feeding with 1:1 syrup.  I used the entrance feeder, placing it inside the box.  The bees accessed it by going under the following board.  I added another bar when I started feeding and saw some new wax today.  I also saw more honey stores so I will no longer feed them after the present batch of syrup is gone.
#1 is still doing well.  When harvesting honey, there was brood in the bottom-most super so no honey was taken from that box.  We did get a fair amount of honey.  This is about half.
After the honey was taken, I put Apivar strips into the hives and the nuc.  I took them out today. 
On earlier looks, the bottom box of #1 seemed pretty empty.  Today I wanted to remove it in order to reduce the hive and do some repairs on the box.  However, after taking out 4 frames with empty comb, I saw a large patch of capped brood on the 5th; end of plan.  So #1 still is two deeps and one medium.  Some of the honey in the medium may have been made when the Apivar was in the hive, so I will not be able to harvest in.  I would like to remove the box before the honey flow next spring but I won't do it as long as brood is present.