On the Increase

This week both hives were up to about 6 seams worth of bees in each. Hive2 would've been a lot stronger than Hive1 but the brood I moved from over seems to have equalised their numbers. If one colony is stronger than the other there's more chance of robbing and fighting between them so it's just as well to try and equalise them.

I think there's about 6 seams worth of bees in each hive now

Looking down a seam

Numbers in the colonies should increase exponentially so now the queens are both getting well into egg laying I should be able to start thinking about adding supers soon. The brood area is still in the middle of the hive with the food stores towards the entrance. This week I've moved an empty frame to between the brood and the food so hopefully they'll get filled with eggs soon.

After finding a wax moth in Hive2 a few inspections ago I later found a waxworm in Hive1. It's doubtful that there was only one worm in the whole hive but I've not seen any other evidence of wax moth since. As the numbers are increasing the bees should be better able to manage them anyway. Hive1 still has some sacbrood but it's still decreasing week by week.

Wax  worm. The last thing this one saw was a chicken.

During the last inspection I made a bit of a cock up. I saw a bee on a frame of stores with red pollen which I decided was worth photographing, so I leaned the frame against the other hive whilst I used both hands to take a photo. Unfortunately the frame fell over dropping bees and nectar between the hives :-o Only three bees got squashed, but it could've been avoided. I might make up a stand to hold a single frame for future photographic endeavours. The spilled nectar will have been collected up by the bees pretty sharpish but that's the kind of situation that can trigger robbing. It can also attract other bees which can mean disease being introduced to your colonies.

I noticed Hive2 had been busy propolising the tops of the frames to the crownboard so I decided to put a propolis trap on the hive and see how they do with it. I've mentioned propolis before. It's basically bee glue, they make it from tree sap. There's a few different types of traps for propolis, the ones I've opted for are just a thin mesh placed above the frames below the crownboard. When it's been propolised you peel it off, roll it up and pop it in the freezer. Propolis is normally really sticky stuff but frozen it becomes very brittle. Once frozen you can, in theory, crack it off the mesh for processing, storage or whatever. I've been processing the propolis I got from the auction and plan to write a proper entry about it at a later date.

Propolis trap on Hive2. The crownboard will go over that.

Close up of the propolis trap.