Don’t really know your condition but they woul be similar to mine. I keep a two deep hive over winter and the bees use that very well. It really gives them a boost in spring and winter feeding is not needed. This produces big hive and they can really collect honey. Its so successful that this year I have a few going into winter in three deeps as I have nowhere to store the honey from them and figured the bees would look after it till spring.
Worth thinking about a normal super under the QE for the bees.
Apparently it is quite common here in Australia to winter a single brood box- whereas I gather in your parts two is de rigueur? I had thought a good compromise might be to add a medium super? I doubt Mum would be adverse to expanding her hive…, But- You wouldn’t add another brood box at the start of winter in any case would you?
Hive was bursting with healthy looking bees fortunately. We went through the combs- first looking for the queen- then shaking (most of) the bees off back into the hive and inspecting each comb. We didn’t see the queen. Here are the frames:
So as you can see brood at all stages, eggs (?), pollen, capped and uncapped honey. There is a lot of capped honey- perhaps 4 of the 8 frames are full of honey. Is this too high a honey to brood ratio? The brood is centered in the hive but a little to one side. We swapped position of two frames to center it further.
Many of the brood frames have plastic foundation, and all are old (that’s how they came in the Nuc). Though the queen seems to be laying fine in these frames- I think I would like to swap out the old frames for fresh (no plastic) ones in spring- a complete Bailey Comb Change?
One of the outer frames had some different looking nectar/pollen. It looks wet- and kind of candied like honey- but multi-pollen colored?- what is this? And what’s with the larger cells above- drone cells?
The hive bearded for a little- then quickly settled back down. All in all- we think things look good for winter? Any one have any thoughts?
The wet, shiny stuff is bee bread, pollen they have chewed up and stored. Its their major protein source. The large cells look like a couple of old drone cells to me which they will probably use for honey. Your brood looks perfect to me but I would not be moving frames this time of year.
Wow, thanks for your amazing journey to date.
We will commence our journey this year and really appreciate your photos and reports.
Living in SA too means that we have the same time frame as you so will eagerly watch your posts.
Thank you very much for your updates. My Flow Hive arrived today and I now need to read a lot more to begin my journey. I live in Adelaide as well, so was interested to read how you got on.
I must say I feel a bit nervous about beginning, being cry new to all of this. I have three wild hives at our property which are in old tree trunks. This is what spurred me on to take the leap into having our own hive. There are also several native bees using our property for foraging which is lovely to see. The only bee selling I can find is on kangaroo island. However there are local beekeeper In my area I will approach. Thank you again for a very informative page. I am sure I will visit it again. Isabelle
@Semaphore Not sure why but I can’t seem to load the pics from this post. (Noticed that they are over 1mb - the small ones i can see fine - yay) I would love to see the one with the bolts and tuna cans . We are having an ant issue . Is it possible to repost or send me the image? Its okay if that too much hassle. thought I’d ask. thanks Tina
( I hope this attaches to the correct post - Not sure why its coming at the bottom - all a learning curve )
OK- time for another update- WINTER IS OVER (pretty much).
We did our first inspection for this season to see how the bees wintered. The hive came through winter perfectly! It is bursting with bees- no signs of disease, pests, queen cells, etc. Every frame was being utilised with good stores of pollen and honey. The two outer frames were 100% capped honey and we decided to remove them and added two new plastic frames with wax rubbed on them. I would have preferred to use wooden frames but we didn’t have any handy. By way of compensation we have fed the bees some nectar we had frozen in autumn- though they have quite a bit of capped honey on the other frames- plenty of pollen stores and were bringing in large loads of pollen.
We also put the flow super back on- but first we did some checks on the flow frames to sort out the issue of misaligned cell rows. The tension wires on all our frames were a little loose- so we added a few twists to each wire and moved the bottom wires from the top slot to the lower slot. This only took about 25 minutes for all 6 frames- very easy. Having done this the frames felt much tighter- and working the key around the slot I was able to ensure all rows of cells were correctly in the closed position. The frames are still covered in wax from last season- it’s a little messy- hopefully the bees can easily clean them up and re-use the wax. They smell great!
This concludes the first update for this new season- given how well the hive did last year with only half a season- and how well they overwintered- we have high hopes for this coming spring and summer. Any feedback is always welcome.
Hive looks good.
Its cold rainy and spring seems to be no where in sight here in SW Western Australia.
I’m not going to attempt a good look yet if the weather forecasts are to be believed. There is considerable blossom about but wind and rain keeping the bees in, bar a few hardy souls.
Today we did have sunshine and light winds and the bees were just teeming in and out, but supposed to be wet and windy tomorrow.
I am blessed with choice when it comes to cameras- as I am a photographer and have cameras for work- and collect old cameras as well- last update photos was shot with fuji x-t1- pretty good little camera. Most of the photos in this thread were taken with a Leica M camera which is worth more than my car…
)
It is like following an adventure through time. The fact that our seasons are out of phase makes it all the more fascinating.