I have no idea who, what, when a nectar flow is declared. I know in TN is starts in the next couple of weeks per the older beeks. But me thinks that the flow has already started.
I have a 5-gallon community feeding bucket in my yard. The bees were in it heavy. They are still feeding from it but not nearly as many bees. But, the honey is being stored in fairly large amounts at the moment. More than I have seen the last 2 years. I am sure that several of my hives could have 20-30 thousand bees. I don't know how you count 'em, but there are a lot of bees in my hives here in town. Not to mention all of the brood. Some of the queens seem to be going into overdrive laying eggs.
I have some comb now to put on the hives for the nectar flow. Some of it was brood comb still containing honey from last year (winter) deadouts. Some of it was the honey frames from deadout . A good bit of it was brood box size frames. Wanted to keep some of the comb back to use with splits/swarms/cutouts/traps. But I may have to use the high brood frames as supers. I need to finally get some honey production. All $ going out and little coming back in.
I have put some comb and foundation frames checkerboarded on a few of the hives and they have been drawing it some.
What's the best use of any honey comb frames (contain capped honey) from deadouts now?
Think it's too late to have these bees draw comb?
As fast as they are now growing I am afraid that putting on empty frames (w/ or w/o foundation) will trigger the bees to swarm as they will understand the frames w/o comb as not enough room.....Unless I put on the comb.
This is an area that I don't really have a feel for yet. Not enough experience to make the correct decisions and make them timely.
I have a 5-gallon community feeding bucket in my yard. The bees were in it heavy. They are still feeding from it but not nearly as many bees. But, the honey is being stored in fairly large amounts at the moment. More than I have seen the last 2 years. I am sure that several of my hives could have 20-30 thousand bees. I don't know how you count 'em, but there are a lot of bees in my hives here in town. Not to mention all of the brood. Some of the queens seem to be going into overdrive laying eggs.
I have some comb now to put on the hives for the nectar flow. Some of it was brood comb still containing honey from last year (winter) deadouts. Some of it was the honey frames from deadout . A good bit of it was brood box size frames. Wanted to keep some of the comb back to use with splits/swarms/cutouts/traps. But I may have to use the high brood frames as supers. I need to finally get some honey production. All $ going out and little coming back in.
I have put some comb and foundation frames checkerboarded on a few of the hives and they have been drawing it some.
What's the best use of any honey comb frames (contain capped honey) from deadouts now?
Think it's too late to have these bees draw comb?
As fast as they are now growing I am afraid that putting on empty frames (w/ or w/o foundation) will trigger the bees to swarm as they will understand the frames w/o comb as not enough room.....Unless I put on the comb.
This is an area that I don't really have a feel for yet. Not enough experience to make the correct decisions and make them timely.