mwjohnson
01-24-2009, 09:57 AM
I was real late this year getting honey off and extracted.
I also thought I'd try putting the sticky supers back on to get cleaned up, however, as I said, I was pretty late...end of November.
Anyway, most everything worked out alright,except for several colonies that went up through the inner cover and were cleaning them up, but then stayed there.
I was really kicking myself when I went to take the supers back. I found them pretty full of bees, about 5 or 6 beespaces were full.
The clusters extended from the top hive body, through the inner cover, into the super, up to the cover.
On one real nice colony the super I left to be cleaned was packed full of dead bees, and has been seriously weakened, but they were still alive the other day.
So I decided (back in early December) that the best thing I could do at that point was to just quickly pull the super, take off the inner cover, set the super on top of the hive body, and put the inner cover on the super, and hope the cluster then would contract into the top hive body.
I figured at least they wouldn't have any interference from the inner cover.
They had lots of honey in the top hive body, and were first class colonies. Mite counts in fall were low...like one had 1, another 3...like that.
I cursed them good first, then said a prayer.
I looked on Thursday night, and was hoping to find they had gone down, and wanted to grab the supers, but was really expecting to find them head first in the cells, was surprised to find they were looking real good. I don't know what they had been eating since.
So yesterday (friday) I grabbed some deeps of honey that I had keep aside for emergency spring feeding, and the kids toboggan, and dragged 3 suppers at a time thru 2 1/2 ft of snow into them. It was 40F. here that day.Today it's back to really cold.
I was thinking the hives were gonna be too tall if I set those new boxes on top... woulda been 3 1/2 or 4 1/2 stories high... so I picked the top hive body and supper up together without seperating them, and removed the bottom deep (mostly pollen, a little honey, no bees) and set what had been the top hive body and super back down, the way they had been, and set the new box of honey on top.
Not sure if I screwed up. Hated to do nothing. I didn't like that empty super in the middle of the stack.I'd hate to lose them.
Guess that I figured I would lose them anyway.
Wanted to ask what you would have done. Other than not putting those wet supers back on in the first place?
Also, we all know bees like to move up. But when there's nothing there? Only had 5 do this.
I'm sure that I'm not sure if that was a good move or not.
I guess time will tell.
Sorry this is so long
Thanks for reading it all
Mark
I also thought I'd try putting the sticky supers back on to get cleaned up, however, as I said, I was pretty late...end of November.
Anyway, most everything worked out alright,except for several colonies that went up through the inner cover and were cleaning them up, but then stayed there.
I was really kicking myself when I went to take the supers back. I found them pretty full of bees, about 5 or 6 beespaces were full.
The clusters extended from the top hive body, through the inner cover, into the super, up to the cover.
On one real nice colony the super I left to be cleaned was packed full of dead bees, and has been seriously weakened, but they were still alive the other day.
So I decided (back in early December) that the best thing I could do at that point was to just quickly pull the super, take off the inner cover, set the super on top of the hive body, and put the inner cover on the super, and hope the cluster then would contract into the top hive body.
I figured at least they wouldn't have any interference from the inner cover.
They had lots of honey in the top hive body, and were first class colonies. Mite counts in fall were low...like one had 1, another 3...like that.
I cursed them good first, then said a prayer.
I looked on Thursday night, and was hoping to find they had gone down, and wanted to grab the supers, but was really expecting to find them head first in the cells, was surprised to find they were looking real good. I don't know what they had been eating since.
So yesterday (friday) I grabbed some deeps of honey that I had keep aside for emergency spring feeding, and the kids toboggan, and dragged 3 suppers at a time thru 2 1/2 ft of snow into them. It was 40F. here that day.Today it's back to really cold.
I was thinking the hives were gonna be too tall if I set those new boxes on top... woulda been 3 1/2 or 4 1/2 stories high... so I picked the top hive body and supper up together without seperating them, and removed the bottom deep (mostly pollen, a little honey, no bees) and set what had been the top hive body and super back down, the way they had been, and set the new box of honey on top.
Not sure if I screwed up. Hated to do nothing. I didn't like that empty super in the middle of the stack.I'd hate to lose them.
Guess that I figured I would lose them anyway.
Wanted to ask what you would have done. Other than not putting those wet supers back on in the first place?
Also, we all know bees like to move up. But when there's nothing there? Only had 5 do this.
I'm sure that I'm not sure if that was a good move or not.
I guess time will tell.
Sorry this is so long
Thanks for reading it all
Mark