July 19, 2008 - 10 am and 5:30pm

10 am visit

I installed the queen excluder.


There were about a hundred or so bees scattered amongst the ten frames in the honey super. They look like they are sizing up what the honey super is and they look like they are going to start drawing comb! I will wait a week before I open the hive to see what they do. Hopefully the bees don't propolize the queen excluder to the point where they can't get to the honey super...




5:30 pm visit

Thought I'd take a look at the hive. I didn't open it, I just took a look around the outside of the hive. I saw several hundred bees clustered around the opening of the hive. I took a closer look and saw hundreds of ants trying to get into the entrance and into any open areas. Adding the queen excluder seems to have attracted more ants than I have ever seen. The ants were all around the gap that the queen excluder creates when placed between supers. I mixed up a batch of insecticide and used a watering can to put it on the hive stand legs and on the ground around the hive.

I checked the hive an hour after putting down the insecticide and that seems to have significantly reduced the ant problem. That seemed to have stopped ants from getting to the hive, and the bees kept working on the ants that were trapped.