Hi there
Iâm a newbie to bee keeping. I live on an island called Tasmania which is a state of mainland Australia. We live by the sea. I have 2 flow hives. Our winters are long and the season for honey short.
Our Bees arrived as nucs for their new homes in November and December 2019.
I concentrated on building the colonies up and gave them ideals as needed to store there honey, ready to bunker down for the coming winter of 2020. I stole no honey from them. They went into winter loaded with stores and came out strong still loaded with stores.
We added flow supers a week ago. It was almost instant: the bees raced up in great numbers to the flowhive plastics. I was amazed at how quick and accepting they were.
Then a couple days later I thought crap, I forgot to put on the excluders. So we took off the flowhive supers and put them in place under the flow hive super. Within an exceptional short time, they abandoned the flow hive supers. Couldnât believe it. So today we removed the excluders to see if they would go back to working the frames.
Woosh, straight back in there, within minutes in lots of numbers They still have there ideals above the brood chamber. So Iâm hoping the queen will stick down. I donât want honey from the ideals so she can brood in those also if she wants to. Hoping this will keep her happy and away from the flowhive super at the top.
Both bee hives had this exact reaction to the excluders being not placed, then placed and then removed. Iâm keeping them off for now.
I am very much just a beginner. So have no option whether to exclude or not to exclude the queen. Just rolling with the vibe from the bees .
Cheers
Mandy
I started with bee Nuc