What an adventure!
Eight days ago, in my hive inspection, Hive #2 appeared to be queenless. I saw a lot of uncapped honey and pollen coming in, but I saw no brood at all. I had decided to wait a week and if still queenless, I would merge Hive 2 and Hive 3 since Hive 3 is going strong with what appears to be a energetic queen.
However, today, when I opened Hive #2, I saw an entirely different scenario. I had many many frames with capped brood. I saw open cells with brood in various stages of development. I saw capped honey in the upper corners. So plan B is to leave them both alone!
Later on, when I'm ready to wrap them for the winter, I will put Hive 3 on top of Hive 2, separately so that hive #3 can catch the warmth of the hive below...and hopefully winter them over.
At some point I'll need to merge the Nuc into somewhere. It only has 3 frames full right now.
Then I went into Hive #1 to find many frames nearly capped. But only two were completely capped over. I'm hoping that in another few weeks, they will all be capped and I'll actually get some honey. I was beginning to doubt that I would since it's so late in the season. I think I've over manipulated the hives this year, trying to expand.
It does look like I'll get a decent enough harvest, although a little late.
No comments:
Post a Comment