So – I want to share the bee update. We visited Queen Daisy’s hive today. We took away all the honey supers last week. We had thought to leave on the ones we’d harvested so that they would clean them up but then they started to distribute new honey across all of them. So, by removing all the supers we forced them to store honey in their two deeps, which is where they raise brood and live most of the time.
Today we inspected the top deep only. We were pleased to see that theyhad packed a fair amount of capped honey in the top deep, 5.5 frames. We didn’t check the bottom because they had a lot there last week and we didn’t want to agitate them, kind of give them a break.
Bee man at bee store says 6 frames capped honey A-OK if we’re insulating the hive, and we are. Otherwise, really 12 or even 14.
We have a super in the freezer with an add’l 6 frames. 10 frames to a super. We’re going to smear fondant (hard frosting) on the four frames on the outside. Hopefully the bees won’t need it because they’ll not need to travel up into the super due to having plenty of food in their deeps. OTOH, we want them to live in supers next year so that we don’t have to lift up deeps, which can weigh up to 90 lbs when full of honey. So, maybe get them bees up into that super.
I saw tiny little bee larvae – didn’t spend more effort looking for eggs as they are so hard to see. Bee book says we don’t really need to check for eggs this time of year.
We fed them some fumagillin as a preventative measure against nosema, or “bee diarrhea.” The fumagillin is mixed with a half gallon of 2:1 sugar:water syrup, put in a baggie, baggie laid down flat on top of the frames (pushing the bees aside), slitting the baggie with a razor. The bees sip the slits.
Mom made us local food from farm share for lunch. Homemade applesauce, homemade squash & apple soup, homemade oatmeal bread, homemade sweet potato pie with whipped cream. Smith says “Earth food, earth tones.”
Hive looks so small with the honey supers off. Bees very busy, much still in bloom. Even more goldenrod.
~ Lady