2 Day Hive Check

Day 1: We had just a couple of goals for this hive check, other than the general check; one was to transfer the Miller Queen split to an 8-frame hive, the other was to add brood boxes to Dill and Hannah's split.

Looking back now I can see mistakes were made. When Charlie got home from work it was cool(er) and overcast, perfect time to check the hives, but other things needed to be done, so by the time we got out to the bee yard the clouds had burned off, and it was getting hot. Normally this is good for checking hives as the foragers are out, but it also means nerves can get a bit frayed in those hot bee suits. Mistake number one.

Normally Charlie and Hannah pop open their hives first thing, not a problem since they are at either end of the hives stand, but now that Matthew had a hive of his own, he wanted to dive into his hive too. Three open hives, that close together, sets up prime conditions for robbing aggression. Mistake number two.

The hives have gotten a bit cranky, the blackberry flow is over and until the knotweed blooms we are in a bit of a dearth. There are still flowers blooming, but we had no rain in July, so the nectar supply is going to be low, esp for flowers blooming in wild areas. Dearth = unhappy bees. Hannah was stung 5x on the legs, her queen may need to be pinched as the hive has been quite aggressive for the last couple of weeks. Matthew's hive, a captured swarm, has been an amazingly calm hive and even it was a little testy. Clover, the carniolan hive, was downright aggressive by the time Charlie got into the second brood box. The bees chased him away from the hive, and were still swarming him ~50' from the hive.

Because the hives have been so calm up to this point, we haven't needed to use the smoker, and we forgot to bring it out to the bee yard. Mistake number three.

Charlie went back to the house and brought out the smoker, by this point I had also gotten stung. We smoked the hives and Charlie threw them back together, and got the heck out of there. We only opened half the hives, the split was not rehived and although boxes were added to two hives, the results were not what we had planned. Lessons learned.

Day 2: We went out to the bee yard with a plan, and a smoker. We suited up, except for Charlie - he did the hard work the day before, and got to work. We lit the smoker, just in case.

Hannah went through her split. She found eggs, fed them and swapped out the mismatched brood box for an orange one.

Next, we popped open the Miller queen split. Wow, the queen is laying like a champ, comb is being drawn, stores are being put by for the winter and the colony is calm, can't ask for more. We moved the colony to a new 8-frame hive and fed them.

We popped open Hannah's cranky hive, fed it, and quickly closed it up again.

As we were getting ready to pack up I noticed that Thistle didn't have much activity, so I opened the hive. Lots of bees, plenty of honey stores, capped brood, larvae and eggs. Everything was fine, so filled the feeder and called it a day.

Hannah did get stung on the foot, a bee crawled into her boot, but other than that we managed to escape unscathed.