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My Biggest 1st Year Lesson

2K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  Bush_84 
#1 ·
My first lesson is that I really have to keep expanding the brood nest ahead of the swarming impulse. See my thread here.

http://www.beesource.com/forums/showthread.php?257638-Honey-in-brood-nest

Shortly after that my bees decided to swarm and I didn't catch it until they were gone. I never saw them leave, but rather saw the drop in temp, loss of bees, and absence of the queen. The bees of course figured it out and reared their own queen. Next time I really have to calculate when that major flow is going to hit to prevent them from swarming. If my memory serves it was right around the bloom of raspberries, which we have massive amounts in the ditches, that they started their process of restricting the brood nest in preparation for swarming. This was a first year hive from a nuc as well!!
 
#3 ·
I had one hive swarm also, it was pretty cool to watch but happened to my strongest hive. The swarm landed about thirty-five feet up in a pine tree where they were out of my reach and that is where they stayed and set up shop.

I thought I had been keeping the brood nest open (top bar hive) but I guess it was not open enough. Part of my problem was probably a result of overfeeding the packages and continuing to offer syrup long after the packages were installed. Fortunately they raised a new queen without difficulty and she is doing well, the hive rebounded quickly and looks prepared for going into the winter.
 
#4 ·
I have some messed up bees. They do not act like everyone elses. Also the weather was pretty funky this year too. Mine reduced the brood nest and became what appeared to be honey bound. But I had made a serious mistake which I was instructed to do, and that was use a queen excluder on a new package hive on new frames. What is wrong specifically with my bees is hard to pin point due to all the mistakes and misunderstandings. I did split that hive because of the swarm cells. I did accidently move the queen with the swarm cell. the old hive did make new ones and raised a new queen the old hive I moved never raised a new queen I still have the old one. Both hives are pretty darn weak for the winter. 1 deep 6 and 7 frames filled. I will candy board them. I think this hive will give me a lesson on how to over winter a weak usless hive. I got absolutly no honey from them for themselves and defentaly none for me. I do have a small super with frames filled but no honey so that is something. Part of me wonders what these girls will do after over wintering . They are supose to be minn hyg. My bees are all colored mixed races. I think next year I hopefuly will learn how to work with the hives to produce honey. How my hives act. I might as well have lady bugs. All and all I am not discouraged. I do enjoy them. To me they are as relaxing as fish. I am still excited about rasing them. And can not wait to experince supers filled with honey and comb. I also enjoyed the split. When my new queen hatched, and the excitment of seeing new brood. And the odd sounds she made. Like morse code which spelled out the letter B which was very weird :)
 
#5 ·
Sounds like you are managing Langs, which I have no experience in (heck I have been keeping my TBH and Warre for just one year), but have you ever considered joining the two colonies back for the winter?

If it makes you feel any better the bees in my TBH had a rough year. We really didn't get temps well into the 60s until July. May and June were under 60, cloudy, and raining. So I had to feed my bees just to keep them from starving. Then they swarmed. Then we had an early frost, which killed the goldenrod. Goldenrod is a rather large fall flower here. So everything kind of went against me this year. After some feeding my bees have approx 13 combs of honey and two of brood going into the winter. I approximate that they have about 80 lbs of honey. So I think that they will do just fine. From what I understand the second year is when the hive really takes off as they have become established with comb and honey.

Between my two hives I set a goal of getting 100 lbs of honey and filling two more Warre Hives. I am also considering splitting my TBH to fill my other TBH. We will see.

Good luck next year!!
 
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