It’s been a busy busy few weeks with summer winding down, the school year starting up and many things to get setup for the fall.
When last we spoke, my little hive that could was getting ready to do big things. Right to the day 21 days after I installed the hive, I had an explosion of bees (21 days is the time for worker bees to go from egg to emerged.)
when those girls hatched, the older ones who were taking care of the comb were promoted to be foragers, with the new bees being put on KP duty in the hive. At that point, all I had to do was sit back, keep feeding them, and watch them fill out the comb in my hive body.
I’ve noted that they have settled into a mason jar ever 2-3 days as the summer has gone on and we are now in the dearth. I am still feeding a 1:1 ratio, but pretty soon I will need to switch to a 2:1 to help the fall girls put their winter weight on. (when you see honey costing 10-12 dollars a pound, this is a major reason behind it. It costs money to make money!)
I had asked my mentor on one of our sessions together when I should look at switching out my top brood box to bring in more frames for the workers to draw the comb out on and start to you. His answer was when 80% of the frames are drawn out and filled. As July came to a close, I found myself in that situation. Now those who are experienced beek’s know that end of July is the start of summer waning down and a lack of pollen plants, which brings on the dearth. I saw that I had two choices, one being to let the girls continue to pack out the one deep box and hope they are able to regulate to get into winter in a super strong position, ready for the dead of winter. Or I could roll the dice and see if I couldn’t push them to prep the second brood box and get ready for winter a bit weaker, but able to run into spring in good position.
I decided to roll the dice.
My reason was to look at the laying pattern on the frames, I didn’t see solid half moons (you can think of a frame as having 3 segments where there are brood or larva in one, with an outer ring of nectar/bee bread/pollen, and a final ring of honey stores.) This is a microcosm of what those bees on that frame need to be successful. -I kind of saw this on most of my frames, but not as much as I would have liked. So I decided to roll my dice and ‘go big or go home’ as it were. (words that may very well come back to bite me come January. We shall see.
Neonpenguin 