The storm blew the lids off several beehives, so since we had to suit up anyway we added our honey supers today. The hive to the far west was full of bees and ready for the supers. The other three new hives still had a couple of frames in their body that they hadn't filled out but we added the supers anyway. The three story hive from last year had a bijillion bees and were ticked off about being disturbed. (Paul got three stings on the hands cause he didn't wear gloves). The top two medium boxes were full of honey (corn syrup?) and a little pollen. There was a queen excluder between the bottom big box and the next two, which we removed. Would have liked to rotated that box to the top, but they were furious. Not a good day to work them much because of the nasty weather. We added a ross round super to the very top. Jessie has been bringing me Indian Blankets (gaillardia) so hopefully the honey flow is just starting up. We also put a lid on the corn syrup bucket. We had set out a 5 gallon bucket when we placed the new bees on April 26th, and the five hives had probably consumed 1/3 of it...plus a bunch of drowned bees in the top.
Short lived but nasty storms. It was a duck and cover afternoon. We got a little bit of hail, heavy winds and had some damage on the roof of the goat barn.
No comments:
Post a Comment