Category: Bee Keeping Journal

Depending on the time of year, I may check on my hives every week or once a month. Unfortunately for these hives and their location, I have not checked on them probably since November. The good and very surprising news is that all three of these hives are alive.

For these three hives, I decided to leave all the honey and resource frames intact and not harvested. This means these hives have an abundance of resources to survive and their only deficiency for survival may be the lower number of bees. Thes hives also received last summer early fall mite treatments. I really would like to see them through until spring.

Corona Street hives were treated with Oxalic acid vapor.

Niagara Way hives were treated with Oxalic acid vapor.

Campus hives were treated with Oxalic acid vapor.

The bee tree on the west side of the Wellborn lawn is occupied and appears very active. The bee tree on the south side of the smith lawn appears to be dormant.

Corona Street hives were treated with oxalic acid vapor.

Niagara Way hives were treated with oxalic acid vapor.

Corona Street hives were treated with oxalic acid vapor treatments.

Niagara Way hives were treated with Oxalic acid vapor.

Corona Street hives were treated with Oxalic acid vapor.

Niagara Way hives were treated with Oxalic acid vapor.

We will be harvesting the Corona Street hives. Our plan is to leave the double deep bodies for each hive and the overwinter survival. We will be harvesting the single or double honey supers. The lower brood boxes were quickly inspected for adequate survival resources. After harvest, the first mite oxalic acid vapor treatments were performed.

A quick inspection was performed for each hive. All hives are queen-right and look strong. I am a bit concerned about the number of bees as these hives all suffered a break in queen activity. I am less concerned about mite activity as these hives did have an interrupted brood cycle for at least 2-3 weeks. In general, they look good going into fall

I got a call from Officer Ed that some bees may have moved back into his empty hive body. My first suspicion was that the hive was being robbed out. Hive robing is common during late summer. I noticed that the heat and dryness has caused a dearth. The bees are confirming this as a significant amount of robing has been observed. This hive was being robbed out.

I opened this hive to perform a split. We have significant bee bearding in the front and huge afternoon orientation flights. Upon inspection we see most of the space completely filled with brood and only small areas at the edges for resource storage. Very early signs of swarm cells were found but none which had eggs.

6 frames were moved over to the new hive location. I was unable to find a queen so I made sure that the splits both had good numbers of bees, eggs, brood and resources. We will open both hive in late July to look for signs of queens.