[Organist]

Hi,

So far, so good, or so it seems. I hived the bees on the 28th. I put an entrance reducer on the hives to the small opening. From what I had read it's purpose is to keep the opening easier for the bees to guard until they build up their numbers. I was wondering when to kick it up to the next opening, or remove altogether. I looked through some old posts. One thing I didn't think about was temperature. I guess a larger opening would make it more comfortable for the bees.

At the present time, there are no traffic jams at the hive openings, and the bees do not seem distressed. While we had couple of hot days, it's been cooled off for a while. I was going to wait until I saw lots of bees vying to get in or out, but it it gets hot again, I'm thinking I should just take it out. What do you think?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[TWall]

Mike,

Was this the 28th of May? A package? Fooundation, no drawn comb? If the answer is yes to all those questions it will be almost a month before you have good amounts of brood hatching...see your population growing.

Do you have other hives? The main concerns about opening the entrance too early would be cool weather where you could get brood chilling with a smaller population of bees. Although, we shouldn't be seeing to many nights below 50 for a while. The other concern would be able to protect the hive from robbers. Robbing typically occurs during a nectar dearth. You should have good nectar flows for at least the next month to six weeks.

You can also take the entrance reducer out and then place a small piece of wood over half the entrance. This gives them plenty of room to get in and out but also takes less guards to protect. It will also provide a little more ventilation.

Have fun,

Tom

 

[flyin-lowe]

I hived my first ever package 3 1/2 weeks ago. I had drawn comb on my frames so the queen started laying immediately. I had an entrance feeder and an entrance reducer so the opening was about 1 1/2". I stopped using the feeder but kept it in place to act as a reducer. I went over today and removed the feeder so now my hive has about a 4-4 1/2" opening. I am expecting my numbers to start going back up this week since it has been 21 days since the queen started laying.