Thursday, May 9, 2013

HIVE CHECK 5/9/2013

Just took a peek at the new swarm hive.  This is the first real check I've done with this hive.  On the last check, I had to remove three beautiful combs from the inner cover and install them into a frame and add more frames to fill the top box.  Other than that I didn't do much checking.
So today I find the bees buzzing and generally calm.  As long as I moved slowly, they did too.  I did not need any smoke.  The hive consists of three medium 8 frame boxes, with mostly drawn comb.  The bees are all in the top box which is what I was expecting.  At least 4-5 frames are full of open and mostly sealed brood.  Laying pattern is OK with a few spotty areas.  I am generally pleased with the queen's egg laying.  I moved the full box to the bottom of the stack and took one frame of brood and moved it to the next box.  That should be enough to encourage them to start moving around more.  I anticipate that we will see a noticeable increase in numbers in the next two weeks or so at which time the hive will hopefully start building up honey and pollen stores.  I did see a small amount of pollen and honey but nothing noteworthy.  They could probably benefit from some syrup but I am holding off for now.  Although they don't need the third box, I left it on for the sake of anticipated expansion.  We'll see what they do with it if anything.
Overall, I am pleased with the progress and disposition of this colony.