27 Nov, 2008 - 11 am

It has been about three weeks since I visited the hive. Today it was warm enough to open up the hive and look inside. Since the colony has two brood supers I only opened the top one.

I didn't see any wax moth or hive beetles. The hive smell seemed okay, not decaying or anything like that, so hopefully that means the bottom super is doing okay too. I didn't have a smoker so I only removed a couple of frames.

The entrance reducer has been installed for three weeks now. The bees seem to be doing okay with it.

There was a lot of activity at the entrance, the bees were bringing in a lot of pollen.

I went ahead and used a watering can to put down some insecticide around the outside of the hive to deal with any bugs, hive beetles and such.

I didn't take very good pictures today, so theres nothing to post of today's tasks.

27 Oct, 2008 - 11pm

Although I have visited the hive several times since the last post this is the first time I took the time to post an entry.

The weather here has been very cool for this time of the year. Its been in the 40s at night and now this week a day or so in the 30s at night.

Todo List:

* install entrance reducer this week or next.
* Medicate bees( fumigilin-B & terramyacin)
* dunno yet, but there must be more stuff

My daughter created a variety of labels to use for the honey jars that were recently filled. My favorite is the one in the lower right corner.

13 October, 2008 - 6 AM

On 9 October I went ahead and pulled two frames from the top brood super so that I could "rob" some honey! The frames had nothing but honey. After extracting the honey, those two frames provided six eight ounce jars of honey.

Since I have taken that honey I can begin medicating the bees in preparation for fall/winter.

I will be putting Apigard VAR in the hive to deal with the varroa mites. I will also continue to use powdered sugar for varroa mites as well.

1 Oct, 2008 - 10:00 am

Checked on the hive to see what they were doing with the honey super. Looks like they were not doing anything in it. So I removed it. Now there are two brood boxes. I will leave the hive like that until next year.

I removed frames from the top brood super. I wanted to see what was going on in there. Looks like there are 3 full frames of honey!! The rest of the frames have brood and honey/pollen. No signs of wax moth, but I did find about 6 hive beetles in the honey super that I removed. I found the queen in this brood super, she was in the middle of the box doing what she does...

There were 4 frames that had about 75% brood and the rest honey/pollen. About 3 frames with 40% brood and the rest uncapped honey/pollen. And 3 frames with all honey


I had to removed the top brood super to check the bottom super. The top super must weigh over 50 pounds.

I put that box back together and opened up the bottom brood super. There are alot of bees but no where near the numbers found in the top super. This bottom super has some honey and pollen and about 3-4 frames of brood, but not very much brood. It seems that the hive has shifted to the top brood super. There were no pests that I could find.

Once I had the hive back together I dusted the bees with powdered sugar.

I went ahead and put down some pesticide.

BTW, I am still only using a spray bottle of sugar water instead of a smoker. So far so good. I noticed I must handle the frames/bees more delicately.

September 10, 2008 - 9:30am

Visited the hive today. Checked the outside of hive and stand for pests. Didn't see any signs of ants!

Since I removed the honey super a few days ago there have been more bees hanging out at the front entrance during the morning hours and evening hours.

The bees are bringing in alot of pollen.

So I put the honey super back on but left out the queen excluder. So hopefully that will give the bees something to do.

September 6, 2008

Forgot to post yesterdays visit.

On the 5th of September 2008.

Removed the honey super since the bees did not draw any comb on the frames. So the little trick of giving the bees sugar water to encourage them to draw comb didn't work this time around.

I used a watering can to put down some pesticides to kill ants and hive beetles.



Today's visit - 6th September, 2008

I thought I would see what the bees were up to as night approached.

There were quite a few bees on the outside of the hive and entrance area. I took a few photos and captured some video footage. Otherwise not much else to write about.

August 29, 2008 - 10:30am

Its been a week since I started the bees back on a 1:1 sugar/water mix to see if that would encourage them to draw comb in the honey super. Well, I can report that, that little trick didn't work. The bees are not drawing comb at all in the honey super. I am going to continue to feed the bees with a 1:1 sugar/water mix for another week and see what happens.

I removed the honey super to see how things are going in the top brood super. I took four frames out to look for pests, and other stuff. The bees have quite a bit of honey and pollen stored in this upper brood box. There are still alot of capped brood scattered amongst the frames. I didn't see any wax moth, or hive beetles. So since I didn't see any signs of pests in this brood box and it smelled of honey I didn't bother checking the bottom brood box. I did check the bottom one a week ago and things looked very good.

The outside of the hive didn't have any ants or other pests.

I filled up the pvc moats with water, as well as the water troughs around the bottom board.

The grass is growing very well around the hive stand. I think I will use roundup to take care of that...