Hooray me! 6 months in

Beekeeping - Basics
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Not that I’ve done anything outstanding mind you.

So I inspected my hive today, I still only have the brood box no super added. I installed a nuc in November and it has been slow going. So slow, I didn’t see much point in doing inspections too often… About once a month and the last two were over the last 4 months! Yep… 8 weeks between inspections!!!
My reasoning was based on what I could see at the hive entrance and in the bottom tray. Pollen going in and hive beetles being trapped. On the inspection prior to today (2 months ago) I did notice a distinct lack of food for the bees so over the space of 10 days I fed them 9kg of 2:1 sugar water.
So today. About 6 frames of honey, + plenty of fresh and capped brood. I didn’t look hard enough to see eggs, my eyes aren’t that great these days… I could have taken photos I guess. Plenty of bees, plenty of honey (I’m guessing).
So it’s not that cold yet. I’m still seeing pollen going in. I saw 2 HB on the frames… eliminated both… All good.

Any thoughts? Does that sound like enough honey to get through?

I think my decision to limit my inspections was vindicated. I reasoned that there were not enough bees to swarm. And the less disturbance the better. When Spring is sprung… I’ll increase my inspections as by then the population will be on the increase and I guess swarming will be the thing to look for. Though adding the Super will be the next step and that will head off any swarming activity anyway I guess. Hive is still viable… that’s a WIN!!!

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Well done, Paul. Good judgement. I’ve successfully over wintered without a super, but be prepared to feed if necessary. If there’s still a flow on and it’s not too cold you could add an ideal super. You could also feed them 2:1 sugar syrup so they’ll store it in the ideal for winter supplies.

Your first spring is less likely to swarm, but regular management is good practice. Don’t forget your mite checks. You’ll have them in Victoria next season for sure.

There’ll be free Varroa management workshops and Zooms heading your way soon.

Mike

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Cheers Mike. Yea I may feed them a little more next week. At the moment I think they have sufficient but a little extra won’t hurt.
Still some room so I’ll probably leave the super till Spring.

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