Bee Bankers hours

[scott_dixon]

I'm fairly new, so I post this kind of stuff to help other newbees out there.

Went to feed my Bees this morning @ 6:30 AM. It was heavily overcast with a light fog at about tree top level. Opened the top cover(s) and the alarm went up, so I decided to smoke them a bit with liquid smoke.

Waited about 3 minutes, opened the lid back up, reached in, pulled out the empty bag and about 5 seconds later the top frames were boiling over with bees. This is a Deep on top of another Deep now, which leads me to believe the bottom Deep was full of bees as well!

Fascinating in one respect, darn scary in another. Set the cover back down quickly with only 2 bees in pursuit. Didn't mess with the other hive at all, as it has about 30% more bees in it!

MORAL: Bees go to work late on cloudy days. Smoke, at least liquid, does not always help.
They will be perfectly fine dining out today until I get home this afternoon.

[Michael Bush]

My guess is with a little REAL smoke you could have gotten away with feeding. I still probably wouldn't do much else. Of course when the bees start boiling, it's time to close up and walk away, unless you're trying to requeen an angry hive, in which case you may not have a choice.

I gave up on the liquid smoke. I have better luck with light syrup with Honey Bee Healthy in it.

[beegee]

I checked my hive just now(12:00 noon). Partly cloudy about 90 degrees. I have two deeps and a shallow. I had installed an excluder last week to see if the rest of the brood would clear out of the honey super. It was all gone and they were filling the cells with nectar, so I pulled the excluder out. I checked the top deep and it had about 5 frames of new comb and they were drawing the other 5, except for one which they seemed to be building drone or brace comb on in two strips in the middle. 3 of the new frames were filled with textbook-pretty capped brood, both sides, evenly spaced and uniform from the edges, with sealed honey in the top rows and upper corners.

The bottom deep(older dark comb) was pretty much cleared out of brood, except some drone brood. there was one frame of pretty dense capped brood pattern. Had a few frames with scattered sections of brood and larvae. They were filling this deep with nectar and pollen.

I'm wondering if I should switch these deeps top-to-bottom? I don't think I have enough bees and brood to split this week, As soon as the new brood emerges in the top, I should have lots of bees. While I had planned to split soon, I think I might be better off to leave them alone going into the winter, We do have goldenrod starting in another month or so. That may allow them to gather winter stores.

[beegee]

I just tried the syrup with HB-Healthy in it. Didn't seem to do much. I lightly misted them and left them alone for about 5 minutes. They weren't impressed with my less-aggressive approach, so I fired up the smoker.

[Michael Bush]

I always keep the smoker handy. But the HBH seems to work a lot of the time if I'm not doing too much.

I always start with the smoker if I'm going to do much manipulation. I just used the syrup when I'm just looking inside, adding a feeder etc.

I probably would swap the brood boxes. It's nice to go into winter with the queen and brood in the bottom and the stores above.

[scott_dixon]

I think it's the weather BeeGee. Clouds are thinning here; We'll see if they are a little less irritable this afternoon. I'm guessing I'm feeding myself into a split here soon as I cannot believe how many bees I have. I find it unlikely that all those bees welled up from the very bottom deep in a matter of seconds. I keep replaying it in my mind and they were moving, but not THAT fast.

[BjornBee]

I'm trying to think of the proper spelling for this word. I believe the way its spelled is dearth. But it does not look correct??

This is the time of the year that the bees are going to be a little more protective with the main flows over. Late July and early August can make bees aggressive. Most of the year I can stand next to the hive and nothing. Not sure if I would try it now.

[John D. Smith]

I thought Dearth was Luke's father and Lord of the Sith.

Sorry, just a bit of Star Wars/Bee humor. I'm such a geek...

[beegee]

That would be Dearth Fader, from the Empire of Varroa, doing battle with the Langstrothians....