This evening before dinner, I noticed that there were an unusual number of bees just hanging out outside the entrance on the left side of the hive. I didn't think too much about it, but tomorrow there's supposed to be the possibility of severe thunderstorms and gusty winds, so I wanted to put the cover back on straight. I thought that would be a simple enough task, but then I went out there and saw all the girls hanging out outside still!
It's been a full brood cycle since I did my last inspection, and I've been seeing orienting flights. So I suddenly started to wonder if there were just so many workers now that they didn't fit?
So after a quick tactic session with my husband, I pulled out my last deep box that I have frames for, and we took off the outer cover, pried off the off-set inner cover to lots of buzzing. I got my suit on after that chorus, just so that I could work more calmly. I got the lid off completely, gently set it by the entrance, and then saw that nearly all the frames in the top box were full.
So I gently put a queen excluder on top, added the box, and shook all the workers from the bottom of the lid onto the the top box. They rapidly descended into the slots and made it very simple to put the lid on and get the outer cover back onto the box. I didn't see all that well, but there were bees coming up between ALL the frames of the second box, and they were doing it front to back, so I suspect that it is far more full than I expected. I'll do a full inspection after the weather calms down, but I hopefully made enough room for the girls for when the rain comes down.
No comments:
Post a Comment