What a challenging hobby

Well, this will end up being another losing year in terms of money spent versus honey production...sad to say.  I guess the big event that caused me trouble is that Hive #1 swarmed in July.  Since then, Hive #1 has been struggling.  And of course, Hive #2, that I started with high hopes ended up needing  a queen after about a month so it's off to a slow start.

Today I combined the two hives into one

August 9 merged hive 1 into hive 2

What I did was take the 10 best frames from hive #1 and added that deep to the top of Hive #2, with only a sheet of newspaper separating the hives.  After a week, I will go into the hive and check that they are all happily combined into one.

Then I will consolidate the three boxes into two, taking the best frames from each to populate the two remaining deeps.  The goal is to get as much brood into the bottom deep (in the case, the dark blue box) and as much honey into the upper deep (the light blue box).

Why did I do this merger?

In looking at the hives from my chair, I saw that Hive 1 was doing nothing at all.  Hive 2 seemed to be doing better than it has for a month.  Then I looked at all the frames in Hive 1 and, I saw a lot wrong.  I saw frames with uncapped honey and pollen and frames with uncapped brood.  I didn't find the queen but it have been there and is just weak.

I'm not sure if a queen made it into the upper box in the new combined hive...it shouldn't be there.  If it's there, one of the queens will die.  There can be only one queen bee per hive.

My goal is to make the hive strong before the winter and given where they are today, I figured I'd better do it now to give a few months for them to make enough honey to store for the winter.

I will get no more honey this year for myself.  I think I am only going to have a couple of gallons...none to sell...barely any to give away.

It's disappointing.

A swarm was the undoing...I think

In retrospect, my mistake was not seeing that last year's Hive, that wintered over so wonderfully, was so strong that it was going to swarm.

I read that many beekeepers just look at the bottom of the bottom hive and if they see honeycomb being built down there, the bees are probably making queen cells, an indication of a swarm.  I should have gone in there in June to remove any cells.  I didn't do that.  I will be watching for that in the future ...if I'm lucky enough for this new hive to make it through the winter.

Notice that small box at the top of the new hive...it's filled with sugar syrup.  I will be feeding the bees beginning now so that they have help creating enough food for the winter.  If they can do that, and I use my wintering technique that worked so well last year, it should set me up for a good start next year.

Thank goodness I haven't retired yet.  I've got to make all my mistakes before the money stops coming in...this is expensive honey!!