Early Spring inspections

The weather was beautiful to day so I decided to check my hives.

The Oscar hive in the back yard is dead. They have starved. I should have paid closer attention. They were a struggling colony for a couple of seasons now. Time to replace them with a stronger colony. I'll likely place this hive at the bottom of uncle Brent's back pasture with a new package of bees in it in April.

The TBH in the back yard is amazingly strong. Still a lot of honey on both ends. Pollen coming in the entrance also. The comb is quite a mess in this hive. Once the nectar is flowing, I'll harvest all the remaining honey and remove all the cross comb.

The TBH at Rosier's is my favorite. Nice straight comb, gentle bees. They still have quite a  it of honey as well. Saw three different colors of pollen coming in today (brown, light gray/white and bright yellow.) Not sure what's blooming this time of year, but they've found it.

The TBH at the Peczuh farm is alive and well also with plenty of stores and pollen coming in also.

I took 4 stings today (all my fault.) I wore my vail, but no gloves. 1 sting to each palm. I've never been stung on the palm before. No noticeable swelling. One sting on the back of the left hand and another on the neck after I had taken off my vail and was observing the entrance of the Peczuh hive.

I knocked together some swarm traps/bait hives today. Two that accept 7 deep frames and 1 that accepts 7 top bars. I will place them soon. One in mom's back yard. One in Castle Dale next to the huge bee tree (if I can get permission.) and one out on ridge road in the lone tree where I caught my first swarm.
I'll make another to place up Hobble Creek near that bee tree. The swarm trap that is there has been unsuccessful for 2 seasons now. I think I need to place it (and another) closer to the creek.

Chickens

I turned the chickens loose in the garden the other day. Apparently they couldn't find their way back through the gate to get to their coop (They don't call them "bird brains" for nothing). They decided to put themselves to bed on the top of one of my bee Boxes.

Moved

I've moved again and moved hives too. I guess I should update things.
The Schampel TBH is still where it's always been.
The Prazen Oscar is now moved with  me and will become the Prazen Oscar.
The Prazen TBH has moved to my friends back yard and will become the Rosier TBH.

Hive Oscar is still at Jared's farm as well as a small box containing a swarm we caught late last summer (2 hives).

More good - more bad

Checked on the Schampel TBH this evening. Very gentle bees. went through the whole thing. Found the queen. This is the first time I've been in this hive since her mating flight. She's laying like crazy! Eggs and larva everywhere. Very strong colony. Lots of stores pollen and capped honey above the brood. Also 2 bars (out of 10 fully drawn) were full and partially capped honey. I added 5 bars. 2 on the north (between straight bars) and 3 on the south.

Look in the cells at the bottom center of the picture.

Checked my other half of this split again. Found the queen again. Found many cells with multiple eggs in them. Not sure if she's just not laying or what. I decided to feed. Put a feeder on the other side of the follower board. Gonna check to see if I can find another queen. Not sure what to do with the laying worker. I've heard (or read rather) that they are hard to get rid of.

Also checked on the Perone style Langs tonight. The one on the Haddock farm is very active. Also very calm tonight. They are starting to build comb in the 3rd box but they are not using the top bars. They are building swirls up from the bottom. Not quite sure how to handle this.

The Perone land at the Prazen apiary is doing good also. Activity at the entrance has been slower than past weeks but it could be the weather. They've drawn out 6 bars now. Most of the way across the bars and about half way into the bottom box. Huge combs. Lots of nectar in the last 2. Couldn't pull out the rest as they were burred to the sides. With such new comb, I didn't want to risk separating the comb from  the sides to have a better look. Very gentle this evening. Didn't even wear gloves.

Haddock Farm Hive Oscar

Inspected the Oscar hive at the Haddock farm tonight. Took the queen encluder off. Inspected the combs and about 6 of them are completely packed with capped brood. Eggs also. I saw the queen. These Carniolan queens are sure attractive bees. The girls are extending the combs down into the bottom (empty) box. Slightly off center but still removable I added bars to the top of the 3rd box (with waxed wooden comb guides) for when they decide to move up there.  I also removed the empty food can and old queen cage. Good laying pattern. Pretty calm bees overall.

Oscar Update

Had a chance to check on Hive Oscar today. Just peaked under the lid into the top (empty) box. The bees were  all down in the frames. The queen is released. The queen cage is propolized to the top of the frames. There was still some sugar water in the can so I left it there. There's a small gap between the bottom 2 boxes. I was able to peek between and see that they were drawing out comb down into the bottom box. Didn't have time to inspect for eggs or larva. Left the queen "includer" on for now.

New packages

Installed 2 packages yesterday. Purchased both from Knight Family Honey in Lehi, UT. Both were 3 lb packages with Carniolan queens. Installs both went smooth. Had my little helper with me.

Notice the bees on the queen cage and he's still not afraid (way cool).

The first package went into a new TBH in the back yard of our current rental. I had hung the queen cage (with candy plug) directly beneath the 2nd top bar on the left and I had arranged the follower boards to allow them 9 bars. The bars were fitted with guides made from strips of wood secured into the kerfs on the bars. The strips were then rubbed with bees wax. The follower on the right side has a 3/4 hole in it allowing the bees to move through to a feeder area where I placed the remaining sugar water that came with the package.

A queen excluder (includer) was placed over the open entrance. I've read about a lot of packages absconding and wanted to prevent this. The includer will be removed once I see that she is laying.

The other package was installed into a hive I will attempt to manage somewhat like an Oscar Perone.

It has 2 deep boxes with bottomless frames only in the top box (these frames happen to be old drawn out comb - she should be able to start immediately laying eggs upon release from the cage). This allows for a more natural and huge brood nest. The next deep box will be for honey storage for the  bees only. These 3 boxes are never to be messed with (Oscar uses 4  boxes). The boxes above these three will contain frames for honey that I will harvest. We'll see how it goes.

I set the queen cage (with sugar plug) directly on top of the frames in the 2nd box (top box is currently empty) and dumped the remaining bees in. I set the can of sugar water also on the frames where they can get to it.  Also used a queen includer on this hive. Afterwards I thought it might have been best to hang the queen from the bottom of the frames in the middle box. Also closed the entrance on the hive base and drilled 5 3/4" holes in the center of the bottom box. I'm starting to think that not having a bottom entrance might have an affect on mites. The reason that I say this is because out of the 3 langstroth hives that we had managed, only the colony that refused to use the bottom entrance survived the 2nd year.