So i did a quick inspection today on my first hive.
Geeze were they toey today. nice sunny day but maybe 21deg and light breeze plus the last week of rain meant they didnt want me in there. but it had been a good 4 weeks since my last inspection. i couldnt even attempt to pull a frame without 10 flying at me. luckily no stings.
Im sure we have had some nectar around lately as the amount they have put in the super and either side of the brood was amazing. 3 frames packed with bee bread and every single frame was packed with bees with wall to wall brood larvae or eggs. actually thinking about it i only saw half a frame which was empty and free for laying.
What i did notice was that on 2 frames on the bottom corners they had capped and uncapped drone larvae so looks like they are very much planning for spring.
soon i want to split and try some grafting so with the drones getting bred is a good sign that i should start thinning about it
Your right about the difference between Sydney’s climate and up here Steve, we can slow down a bit from a 100 meter sprint to a 400 meter race for about 6 weeks.
Actually the cooler months I find is my best months for honey yield, although the early mornings there is a lack activity till the temp gets up a bit. There must be an increase in nectar about to compensate for the decrease in foraging hours. The Spring Wattle and white Paper Barks are in heavy flower now and the Banksia are starting to flower with the good rain recently.
Cheers
I think even the blue gums are flowering like crazy. ive seen the lorikeets flocking to them so hopefully they are giving us some flow also for the bees. fingers crossed for an amazing spring
I decided to inspect my other 2 hives (originally was just going to do 1) so i went for what i would say is my weakest hives. i just wanted to check that they had honey stores and pollen and breeding well. well as soon as i took the first frame out of the super i knew i was in a bit of trouble.
The frames are 1/3 to 1/2 capped honey. but noticed they look a bit wet. well damn 2 frames 100% are getting slimed out by SHB. this was the one super i didnt have a beetle trap in the super stupidly.
Now i caught it early (i think) ive removed the whole super just to be sure as clearly i didnt have the numbers in the super to maintain it and not allow the SHB to get in their although i only saw 1 beetle during the inspection. i guess thats all it takes.
Ive got all the frames in the freezer now to kill them all off. what would you do after? will the jive when stronger take them back and clean them all up?
i ended up going through my other hive and that had the same amount of capped honey and what not but much strong and no beetles or slim out. and that hive also had 1 frame of capped dronws ready to go. i cant believe it but hey atleast i caught it early. never stop learning!
Well you’ve caught it early I hope, but that’s a fairly minor SHB slime out, when it happened to me there were hundreds of larvae being ejected from the hive as well as the ones destroying 4-5 brood frames.
I think i caught it really early as it was only 2 honey frames that look affected at this stage. only a few larvae on the frames and nothing on the hive mat above the brood. so im guessing i got it really early thankfully.
It didnt have a smell either to it yet.
now to figure out what ti do with the frozen frames. im guessing as it isnt that bad i could feed it back to the hive a bit later on?
I’d probably try to rinse off any slime then shake the water off, wrap in cling wrap and freeze for a few days.
The bees should clean them up as there’s not much comb damage. When they went my hive it was all in the brood and they didn’t touch the honey super above.
Also hive mats usually go on the top super directly under the lid not between boxes.