Hi, just looked at my hives and one hive has been a bit weak. Now I see there is only brood but no honey?
The hive next to it has a fair bit of honey.
I suspect they are getting ready to leave?
Hi, just looked at my hives and one hive has been a bit weak. Now I see there is only brood but no honey?
The hive next to it has a fair bit of honey.
I suspect they are getting ready to leave?
Hiya Nick, welcome to the forum.
Feed, feed, feed.
You could move a honey frame and or brood frame that contains a decent honey arc from the strong hive to the weak hive. Just make sure that the weak hive is disease free.
It is up to you to take care of your bees, especially in hard times.
You already have the assets in your strong hive with frames of honey so it is a simple fix to transfer a frame of honey from the strong hive to the weak hive, and an empty frame to the strong hive. In this situation I would move an uncapped frame rather than a capped frame of honey.
It really is important to keep both the hives about equal to cut down the risk of robbing from the stronger hive. When I say equal in mean in stores as well as in bee numbers and brood.
Welcome to the forum, lots of nice and helpful folks here as well as lots of reading.
Cheers Nick
I suspect they are hungry .
Make up some sugar syrup and feed them move a frame of honey from your other hive.
Hi Nick, welcome to the forum I don’t fault the advice to feed, but I wonder if you thought you saw evidence of swarm preparation. The other concern would be robbing by the other colony. You might want to look into more info for both of those scenarios - and let us know more details too so we can give solid advice.