Help with bee math and advice needed.

**Aerindel** · 03-15-2013, 01:05 AM

Warmed up to 55 today and for the first time this year I saw bees bringing in pollen, buckets and buckets of the stuff which after a three or four mile walk I determined was coming from birch trees, the only thing to have bloomed in my neck of the woods. Opened up the hives and found the cluster had broken and there seemed to bee lots of honey and bees everywhere, I didn't dig into the brood nests due to the fairly low temps.

It seems the hives are doing better than I thought so I removed them from their foam board insulation panel and decided to try and weigh them at the same time.

Weights ranged from 101lbs to 110lbs. These are all three medium foundationless hives.

Weight of the empty equipment is 48lbs. (boxes, frames cover and floor but no wax, bees or foundation)

This gives me between 62 and 50lbs of bees, wax and honey in each hive.

I did not weigh the hives going into winter. Going in I had brood only in the bottom medium covering about six frames, all upper bodies fully drawn and filled with honey/pollen.

In my inspection of the upper two hive bodies it seems as though the bees only ate the honey from the center portions of the middle three frames on both levels, leaving the ends and outer frames untouched.

What I am wondering is how this compares with other hives and if this is a good thing or not. Do I need to harvest some of that honey to prevent swarming or are they going to burn through it before the dandelions start (another full month at the minimum.)

Any advice is appreciated, this is my first successful spring. (a spring where I have living hives)

My bees today:

**beepro** · 03-15-2013, 03:34 AM

Are these the regular Italian type bees? Congratulation on your first successful over wintering hives.
They are big beautiful bees. Are they also gentle too?
If you are not feeding them then leave the honey for them to eat. When they started raising their broods
they need lots of resources. If the hive is too crowded you need to give them extra space by checker boarding
or some other swarm control methods. If you have many hives then you can take half of their honey too depending on how strong are your hives. Also, wait for another month at the beginning of April to do honey because there probably is another month of chilly freeze weather ahead. Because this year the weather is abby normal I think.
Hope they do well on the coming months.

**Aerindel** · 03-15-2013, 06:29 AM

They are carnolions, and yes, they are gentle, almost too gentle. I never seem to need smoke or a veil unless I do something stupid.

Hive doesn't seem crowded, it just seems to have a lot more honey than I expected at this point in the year.

Winter has been extremely mild this year. I don't think it even got into single digits, which is really odd for here.

**snl** · 03-15-2013, 06:34 AM

Originally Posted by Aerindel

decided to try and weigh them at the same time.

Weights ranged from 101lbs to 110lbs.

How did you weigh them?

**johng** · 03-15-2013, 09:03 AM

I agree with Beepro they will use a lot of honey now that they are bringing in pollen. They seem to use more right before spring than they do throughout the winter.

The little bit of experience I have with Carnies is that once they start brooding up they will explode so keep an eye on them and add room before they need it.