Looking at your photos- it looks certain that central frame is full- or if not will be very soon. Do you plan to harvest them all at once or individually? I have gone with harvesting two at a time lately- and over half a day- in increments. Works well for me and for the bees. I see you wild flowers are just starting to bloom too- all is good in the apiary project… Coming together indeed.
I once read somewhere that bees don’t forage in the immediate vicinity of their own hive- personally I don’t believe it. You will soon be able to test that theory.
I agree Jack, they will forage close by if there’s a good nectar source. It’s worth remembering that when we see bees leave a hive, take off & fade into the distance, they a probably going to a predetermined destination. You’ll see a lot of dancing & waggling in an observation hive of bees advertising the location of the nectar source.
If a scout bee finds nectar or honey close by, they will certainly cash in on it. You’ll see evidence of that with the dances. There will be no waggle just a vigorous circle dance.
It is interesting how they can ignore a close supply of nectar. I’ve seen it here myself when they hardly touched the flowers from my blueberry orchard just metres from the hive. I can’t tell if the bees hammering the pincushion hakea flowering now are mine but I suspect so.
Mind you we have a distinctly Antarctic blast on right now, so that made the bees pull their little heads into the hives. Currently -18 degrees c apparent temperature at the coldest place in Australia - the top of Mt Wellington/kunanyi …not as bad here, but cold.
I agree it looks like a good harvest due soon - even the outside frames look nearly done, at least from looking at the photo. Hopefully it will be all good to go when you look inside. I found when I harvested the middle, they took to re-filling them, and I never actually got to harvest the outside, just kept harvesting from the ones between the two outside frames.
Hi Dawn, they probably ARE protesting that they need more space. It has recently occurred to me that I’m not seeing the bearding with my bees like a lot of photos in this forum. The only things that I’m doing different from a lot of folks on this forum is: I’m spacing my frames evenly (9 frames in 10 frame supers) & I’m using a solid floor. I’m not suggesting 7 frames in a flow brood box, however, seeing as the flow brood box holds nearly 9 frames, if the 8 frames were evenly spaced & the core flute placed in the top slot… At least during the summer.
perhaps it’s something you see more in dry heat type situations jeff? My hives all bearded a lot during the driest parts of summer. None of them swarmed though. Also if some honey has leaked during that harvest they tend to beard out the front for that day.
@BeeMoney have you considered adding another half/ideal box instead of a deep? The downside is that the frames are not interchangeable then- the upside is that the bees will be able to fill it out much faster without stopping them from filling the flow super as much. I am considering going from single brood to brood and a half on some of my hives this spring to see how they go with more brood.
Another short gap measure would be to use one of those slatted rack things at the bottom- they give the bees more room to hang out in:
One other thing- I strongly recommend you get a bucket with holes in the lid and some tubes for your harvesting- makes it much easier to harvest over the course of a day without worrying about bees getting caught up in the cling-film, changing jars, etc:
Hi Jack, if you get bearding next summer, my method might be worth trying on at least one hive. We get lots of dry heat here as well. Whether it’s wet or dry heat, the bees still have to maintain that constant temperature in the brood area. That extra 2 or 3 mm between the frames might be all they need in order to get that air flowing more effectively.
I think if Deryck’s bees don’t swarm, (and he advises can’t see queen cells) then everything is just about perfect there. He has plenty of bees onto a good flow and they are filling the Flow frames - and not just the middle ones. His set up is working about as perfectly as any Flow hive could and in the configuration imagined/intended by the inventors.
Down the track sometime he will of course need to think about winter storage quantities etc., (which I believe he is onto ), but at the moment it all appears to be going swimmingly.
I’m going to need to put that other brood box on for sure. It is raining this morning and about 1000 bees are still outside and all wet
It’s so packed there is no room for everyone
Last summer we had a very big storm in the middle of the night with high winds and heavy rain… at 2 am I became concerned some of my hive roofs might have blown off and went out to put bricks on them…
I was quite surprised to find that there were large beards of bees on every hive- soaking wet and fully exposed to the wild elements in the middle of the night …next day when the sun came out all was back to normal and no sign of any harm done- no dead bees to be seen, etc.
We also had a lot of rain recently & I thought for sure all my bearding bees would head back inside - nope!
I notice that the colony bearding the most is the one with the cedar flow brood box, that also has the Flow super on now, and hardly at all on the other hive with light colored painted boxes. Hard to say if that’s a reason though, because the Flow colony was stronger to begin with.
I have been in exactly that situation. For lack of other immediate ideas, I put an ideal foundationless box above the flow box. The worst boarding stopped straight away, as they got busy building out the frames in the ideal. Gave me beautiful honey comb. After the nectar flow I took the ideal box off and sold the honey comb. Froze the empty or not capped honey comb and use it now to help along nucs.
