We added an extra another honey super to every hive today. That makes a total of 14 supers total (3 x 10 frames plus 11 x 8 frames = 118 total frames). We should have a nice honey crop this year. I will now leave the hives untouched for 3-4 weeks and see what happens. When we inspect in mid-July we will hopefully have lots of capped honey, built out foundation, copious amounts of healthy brood, and no mites or hive beetles.
Additional actions of note today included …
Middle – Added a second deep brood box in addition to the honey super. I transferred two frames of brood up into the middle of the new box. Removed the solid bottom board that was still there from the swarm capture and added a screened bottom board and a slatted rack. I also removed the temporary nuc sized robber screen I add been using for an entrance reducer. I replaced it with my homemade reducer made from window screen. Since this is still a new expanding hive I wanted a reduced entrance so they can still defend the hive, but didn’t want to block off the ventilation.
Eastern – Removed the entrance reducer. This swarm hive with last year’s queen is on its own and ready to go!
Pasta – Added the second brood box in addition to the honey super. This new queen is doing a great job. I transferred two frames of brood up into the middle of the new box surrounded by new foundation. The weather is supposed to stay warm and there are a lot of bees in this hive so hopefully they will move up, protect the brood, and start building new comb.
Romans – The medium honey super I added was a hand-me-down from another beekeeper. It was really old and you can see it is not the same size as the other boxes. I will probably try to swap it out eventually and take it out of production.
All five hives now have a screen bottom board, slatted rack, and double deep brood boxes. They should all be ready for the summer. I anticipate the honey flow will slow down and end in the next 2-3 weeks.
The future plan is to …
- Pull and extract honey supers in July.
- Test and treat for varroa mites, if needed
- We will use Apiguard for the mite treatment, which means there can be no honey supers during the 4-6 week treatment period.
- We should be able to add honey supers again around the end of August. That will give them time to start adding more honey for the winter months.
- So far all the other plans we have made are constantly changing so we’ll see how it goes.
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