This Inspection was certainly interesting... and quite messy!
It was also challenging to inspect the hives AND take pictures AND watch babies being born!
HIVE #1 -- Hive #1 has still not gone into the top box, so I've decided to use the Pyramid Technique to drive them up. I took the center 3 frames of brood and moved them to the center of the top box, and staggered the bottom box with new and brood frames. This technique is nicely explained here : Pyramiding : Getting Bees to Move Up
As I still am not seeing honey stores in there, and they are still refusing the top feeder, I've decided to give them a Baggie Feeder. I'm happy to report... THEY FOUND IT!!! -- and are using it! I'm hoping that this means they will begin drawing more comb and rearing more young.
HIVE #2 -- I was prepared that Hive #2 was still a mess & yes, it was.
The top feeder was badly stuck to the top cover -- the trick I read about certainly didn't help!!! After prying it apart I began the frame-by-frame inspection and saw batches of brood, but they are still not drawing out frames!!! They still only have about 4 done... I'm really beginning to think I need to re-Queen this colony!
Here are some pics of what found inside:
I also am still not seeing stored honey or sugar water.. WELL, I'LL GET TO THAT IN A MOMENT...
I diligently scraped off the errant comb that lead from the frames to the top, inner cover, and was getting ready to put it all back together, when I noticed a HUGE mess on the bottom of the top feeder.... Of course, the feeder still had sugar water in it, so this was NOT going to be fun...
Here's a pic :
I knew I had to take care of this mess and convert this hive to a Baggie Feeder IMMEDIATELY!
What appeared at first glance to only be their sugar water store, ended up also having some brood comb as well.
----------------------
WARNING -- IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH DO NOT LOOK BELOW... IF, however, You're Fascinated with Nature, Keep Reading...
Not thinking too much about it, I scraped out the comb from the Top Feeder, put it in my little bin for excess comb and went into the house...
Most of the comb was dripping with Sugar Water... Well, now I know where they were putting their food stores!!!
In the kitchen I started to clean up and quickly realized that something was different about a section of the comb... I had scraped from there some brood comb!!
I feel horrible that some larvae were killed in this process... Luckily not too many, but I was fascinated to really see what Larvae look like in their various stages. I was even blessed to witness a couple of bees emerge from this comb.
Seeing Two Babies begin to emerge from a section of comb I ran out of the house with camera in hand...
Here's what I found :
No comments:
Post a Comment