Tuesday, August 30, 2011
This title needs a story otherwise one might get the wrong impression about just what or whom she refers to.
To begin I will give you some background on the system I had come up with based on warre methodology. In the spring I would under super (place an empty box under the colony) so the broodnest could expand onto new comb, this facilitates yearly comb renewal without breaking or disturbing the broodnest structure. Through the flowing seasons I would "ideally" remove some comb from a couple boxes above the broodnest this will let the bees harvest and store more honey without the need to fill a whole box (checker-boarding). I would keep the hives at four boxes tall with progressive harvests.
The images you see on the left are my box lifter and an escape board based on a design I found online.
Today I was planning on harvesting the top box from hive number five, so I placed the escape board under it and above the rest of the hive, this lets the bees travel downwards while preventing them from traversing upwards, then the idea was I could just remove the now bee devoid empty box of honey. I waited an hour and checked but the bees were still there, so I concluded that my escape had not worked, Ok I said time for plan B.
Plan B involved removing individual comb and brushing all the bees off one at a time, this went surprisingly well. As I removed the first comb (drawn out perfectly straight) I was impressed with its beauty, It would have made the most gorgeous honey comb. The second comb was just as impressive, the third at first glance was more of the same until I noticed some brood! So I checked a bit further and sure enough the queen was laying a nice pattern of brood in all this wonderfully new wax. This is why the escape board hadn't been working the bees did not want to "escape" they wanted to be in this box.
I was very excited about this discovery even though it meant I have to wait a couple more days to harvest. You see the top box on number five had previously been under the box that all this hives brood was in, this in turn means when I moved this box to the top thinking the queen had not moved down into it I was unknowingly moving the queen as well. This proves she will move down onto new wax just like warre says, only I find she moves much to slowly to always under super. I think under supering should be done once in the spring for broodnest expansion then on top for honey harvest.
To begin I will give you some background on the system I had come up with based on warre methodology. In the spring I would under super (place an empty box under the colony) so the broodnest could expand onto new comb, this facilitates yearly comb renewal without breaking or disturbing the broodnest structure. Through the flowing seasons I would "ideally" remove some comb from a couple boxes above the broodnest this will let the bees harvest and store more honey without the need to fill a whole box (checker-boarding). I would keep the hives at four boxes tall with progressive harvests.
The images you see on the left are my box lifter and an escape board based on a design I found online.
Today I was planning on harvesting the top box from hive number five, so I placed the escape board under it and above the rest of the hive, this lets the bees travel downwards while preventing them from traversing upwards, then the idea was I could just remove the now bee devoid empty box of honey. I waited an hour and checked but the bees were still there, so I concluded that my escape had not worked, Ok I said time for plan B.
Plan B involved removing individual comb and brushing all the bees off one at a time, this went surprisingly well. As I removed the first comb (drawn out perfectly straight) I was impressed with its beauty, It would have made the most gorgeous honey comb. The second comb was just as impressive, the third at first glance was more of the same until I noticed some brood! So I checked a bit further and sure enough the queen was laying a nice pattern of brood in all this wonderfully new wax. This is why the escape board hadn't been working the bees did not want to "escape" they wanted to be in this box.
I was very excited about this discovery even though it meant I have to wait a couple more days to harvest. You see the top box on number five had previously been under the box that all this hives brood was in, this in turn means when I moved this box to the top thinking the queen had not moved down into it I was unknowingly moving the queen as well. This proves she will move down onto new wax just like warre says, only I find she moves much to slowly to always under super. I think under supering should be done once in the spring for broodnest expansion then on top for honey harvest.
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