I opened up the two new hives. There are lots of bees and lots of new comb. I could not find one of the queen cages – it must have fallen all the way down. I did not use smoke and the bees were agitated. There was a large lump of bees and I think they might have been huddling against the queen cage. I will wait a while before looking for the cage. There’s not much I can do anyway.
I pulled the mini-super out of the Connie hive. The bees were very upset with me. This is the hybrid Italian-Russian hive and it was very upset and there were a huge number of bees. I thought it would be over fast, but I was wrong. I should have used smoke.
I will always use smoke from now on with the hives. I was stung a dozen times today and I hurt!
I am 6 ft 3in and the bee suite, although being XL is not extra long and they bees stung me many times through my socks.
I think I will ignore the bees for a while. The next step is add a queen excluder and super on each hive, but I will wait until the memory of pain goes away.
After some 30 years of beekeeping in many bee acssoiations as Chair,seccy etc largely experimenting and now ageing a little have a single Warr’e. One word of warning. Do make the hive of rough timber, pallets probably not thick enough timber in the UK. Making from any form of ply and putiing any form of safe protection coating will prove too smooth to permit an easy climb in for the bees.I have a swarm that is trying it’s darndest to make it for the third day despite my pre rubbing old comb on all the internal surfaces and giving some good drawn comb.It would seem that the rougher the timber the better.
Sounds like good advice. I am using the cheapest plywood money can buy I think it is rated C-D which means that one side is pretty bad and the other side is worse. The plywood is sanded, but is no anywhere near what you’d call finished. I am going to paint the outside to protect from the elements, but I won’t touch the inside.
Thanks,
Keith