Just when I think I may be able to harvest a frame of two, 3 or 4 of 7 are just about full, they seem to be emptied almost overnight….
Does this mean they’re having trouble getting enough food for the brood?
Thank you!
Hi Kerry, welcome to the forum.
You could be right. You might be in a honey dearth, so therefore the bees are using up stores from the honey super.
Has the population dramatically dropped? If the colony swarmed, the bees that swarm will have filled up on honey.
Hey Jeff, thank you for your reply!
I’m fairly sure the population is still very strong, because I can see heaps between the frames still, from the back, and the side viewing windows are just about full too……
I’m a fair novice, so am finding my way, step by step, but figure there has to be a measure of common sense to it, somewhere, and the fact that i have 2 hives, and there see so two wild colonies on our rural property tells me there is generally enough good for them all, or they’d have moved on…???
I guess I’ll just keep monitoring, planting, and living being part of it!!!
Kerry
You’re welcome Kerry. I’m sure there’ll be enough food for the 4 colonies, bearing in mind that scout bees cover a huge area in search of nectar sources.
Bees don’t generally “move on” in search of a better food source, they will stay put and starve to death if the dearth is severe enough. We can feed our bees to prevent that from happening, if necessary.
One great video to watch on youtube is “City of Bees”. In that video you can get an idea of the area bees cover by the distances the bees in the waggle dances are indicating by using the formula A = pye R squared.