I noticed your entrance reducer is still one. Any idea when you will remove it? I just removed mine (48 days old) and that's why I'm curious.
I had some robbing issues a few weeks back and I am now hesitant to remove the reducer until I see it has become a real impediment to traffic. But I may be being overly cautious. I was under feeding my bees and they may have just been robbing from each other because they were starving. Now that they have plenty of food
I could probably take the reducers off but I am a little gun shy.
Also, you number your frames. Why? Part of your record keeping system?
Yes, part of my record keeping. My goal is to take a photo of both side of each from every time I do an inspection. My thinking was that I could then use the numbering on the frames to tracking the progress and usage of a frame over time. However, when I added the top box and put in a bunch of new frames I neglected to add numbers to them. Not my brightest move... Also the stickers I used the first time were old and not very sticky and so now are falling off. I still believe numbering the frames was a good idea but I need to do better at implementation.
Last question, you have two different types of bees. What are the behavior differences? What are the carniolan like? I have only Italian.
The Carniolans and the Italian seem very similar to me but I can't say I've been doing this long enough to notice any fine distinctions. The Carniolans are mostly darker colored and the Italians are mostly lighter colored. Both are very calm and only get a little ornery when I open up the hives.
How close are the hives to each other, and does that matter?
My hives are about 3 feet apart. I've read drifting can be a problem if the hive are too close together but I've got to work with the space I have.
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