[ZEEBEE]

Hello all,

BTW, I finally made a donation to this great forum. Sorry for the delay...I have no excuses.

My hives are on a Navy Base. Three of them are in a field where helicopters like to play around in. This is my second year in the field with no problems until......

I inpsected my hives 2 weeks ago only to find two of them knocked down!! The first thing I thought were vandals or hunters... My friend and I put them back together. My friend got stung once (his initiation).

It turns out that the V-22 Osprey was flying that weekend and knocked them down. The down draft on that thing is enormous!! Its a great field and I don't want to move them so I strapped the boxes together and staked the stands into the ground. So far, so good.

Effects of the attack:

One hive lost a queen. They quickly made 4 supercedure cells and quite a few swarm cells. I cut out the swarm cell and let the new queens emerge. They emerged last week. I guess I still have to wait at least 2 moe weeks to see eggs??

Also, all the bees are now foragers and collecting lots of nectar. The two deep boxed are jammed packed with it. I am afraid that when the new queen starts laying, she'll have no place to lay. I plan on pulling 4-5 frames of capped honey and replacing it with foundation.
Is this what you usually do?

Thanks in advance.

Mike

 

[rainesridgefarm]

The best thing you can do is give them a queen and put on a comb honey super. They will start to draw out the super and move honey up out of the brood nest for the queen to lay. They always want honey above the brood nest so they will move it and make a nice super or 2 of comb honey.

 

[Jim Fischer]

Funny, Ospreys have not been known to be problems
for beehives.

As far was what to do about the damage, I agree
with Raines... get a queen. You may choose
to ignore this if you have enough hives nearby
to insure a good mating of a homebrew queen.

 

[BedWetter]

What did you do to be able to place your hives on a military instalation?

 

[ZEEBEE]

Bedweetter,

I just asked the natural resource/wildlife manager at the base. He was overjoyed to have hives on the base. He took out some maps and showed me some good out of the way spots.
As long as its not for a business, its ok.

 

[BedWetter]

Great. I will give it a try