Honey bees

   / Honey bees #161  
Nice to see the bees and the gorgeous hives!

What's around the legs of the hive stand?

All the best,

Peter
 
   / Honey bees #162  
LBBJ
If they have cells let them alone for 3 weeks. A lot of times the workers will ball the queen if she has not mated yet when disturbed.
 
   / Honey bees #163  
Here is what I did today. Copied from beesource.

Today I tried something new to me. I set up 5 hives the way Bob Binnie does to start a nuc. It was 65* today and windy. I did deep inspections on 20 hives. I found swarm cells in 1 and made 4 splits with cells and extra frames from other hives in that yard. I will go back to those 5 and swap things around and add a double screen board under the nuc. I am looking forward to see how this turns out for me.
I also sold a bunch of medium box's for a friend of mine that is retired now at 84.
I bought 4 metal hive stands 12' long and 10 new bottom boards for me.
 
   / Honey bees #165  
Bees are nice. We have a fairly good number of wild bees in the area & enjoy seeing them thrive. They are not honey bees - mostly local native bees and some bumble bees.
 
   / Honey bees #166  
Got all the swarm traps up this weekend... Now we wait.
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   / Honey bees #167  
Well it’s very early in the season here in Indiana. We had a colony bearding heavily and decided to do our first hive inspections. All colonies wintered on 10 frames. Some still had capped honey left. All had all 10 frames full of brood/resources. We added three fully drawn frames to each. It’s not even mid April and the colonies have 13 frames! The boxes were FULL of bees, packed.
 
   / Honey bees #168  
Just re-ordered honey from the honey farm I like about 45 miles away. Three 2# bottles at $16 each. Free shipping for orders over $45 dollars so no driving.
 
   / Honey bees #169  

CloverKnollFarms​

Did you add a full box of frames? If not they will make a mess drawing comb how they want.
If you did add a box of frames pull the caped honey up and place the drawn frames beside the brood frames. The Queen will fill them up fast. Also check them once a week keeping an eye on honey supply's. Don't be afraid to feed them 1-1 sugar water as they grow. They will stop taking the SW when things are in full bloom.
 
   / Honey bees #170  
Hoot Owl said:

CloverKnollFarms​

Did you add a full box of frames? If not they will make a mess drawing comb how they want.
If you did add a box of frames pull the caped honey up and place the drawn frames beside the brood frames. The Queen will fill them up fast. Also check them once a week keeping an eye on honey supply's. Don't be afraid to feed them 1-1 sugar water as they grow. They will stop taking the SW when things are in full bloom.
Click to expand...
You never really add a full box of frames in a
Layens hive. (There is only one box) Never have, never had any issues with them drawing bur comb. We also never manipulate frame locations, we let the bees sort it out. Also, we don’t feed sugar water.
In a Layens, we literally add frames at the far end of the hive as they need them. Then in mid October we harvest. That is the extent of the hive work.

Our frames are also 12”x15”… each one holds 10+ pounds of honey when full.
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