Today I decided upon viewing another beard on Tower Place that circumstances had to change. Tower Place had to move into a higher quality condo. I began preparation for the move to Colony Square,
Colony Square is of course larger and (more importantly, cooler) than tiny Tower Place. (A small Atlanta joke). Tower Place has a solid bottom board and offers little opportunity for ventilation. So the move happened this morning.
First I prepared the hive. I took each box off and draped it to keep the bees peaceful. I opened the bottom box and moved the five frames to the deep I had prepared for them at Colony Square. There was good brood in the nuc - and I saw eggs and tiny c-shaped larvae.
In the top two boxes there was lots of honey and in box #2 of the three there were eggs and brood.
Since the 10 frames in the top two nuc boxes were pretty much used, I checkerboarded the honey frames with empty frames and set the hive up with two medium boxes atop the deep. It's more space than they currently need but we are in a nectar flow and I want them to keep working.
The goal of this move is to provide the hive with more ventilation. You can see in the slides the screened bottom board topped with a slatted rack. This gives the hive lots of room for air circulation and cuts down on the need to send bees outside to beard.
I'm having my sons-in-law save beer bottle caps for me to use to help this year with hive ventilation as well. My friend/mentor in Virginia, Penny, has suggested using a bottle cap at each corner of the inner cover to lift the telescoping cover up just a little, providing more ventilation and avoiding the HUGE opening provided by proppng a stick in the back of the hive between the inner cover and the telescoping cover.
You can see the steps of the move in the slide show below. Also I opened the other hive, Lenox Pointe, and found beautiful eggs in that hive. It was doing well and I simply looked around a bit and then closed it up and went away.
Colony Square is of course larger and (more importantly, cooler) than tiny Tower Place. (A small Atlanta joke). Tower Place has a solid bottom board and offers little opportunity for ventilation. So the move happened this morning.
First I prepared the hive. I took each box off and draped it to keep the bees peaceful. I opened the bottom box and moved the five frames to the deep I had prepared for them at Colony Square. There was good brood in the nuc - and I saw eggs and tiny c-shaped larvae.
In the top two boxes there was lots of honey and in box #2 of the three there were eggs and brood.
Since the 10 frames in the top two nuc boxes were pretty much used, I checkerboarded the honey frames with empty frames and set the hive up with two medium boxes atop the deep. It's more space than they currently need but we are in a nectar flow and I want them to keep working.
The goal of this move is to provide the hive with more ventilation. You can see in the slides the screened bottom board topped with a slatted rack. This gives the hive lots of room for air circulation and cuts down on the need to send bees outside to beard.
I'm having my sons-in-law save beer bottle caps for me to use to help this year with hive ventilation as well. My friend/mentor in Virginia, Penny, has suggested using a bottle cap at each corner of the inner cover to lift the telescoping cover up just a little, providing more ventilation and avoiding the HUGE opening provided by proppng a stick in the back of the hive between the inner cover and the telescoping cover.
You can see the steps of the move in the slide show below. Also I opened the other hive, Lenox Pointe, and found beautiful eggs in that hive. It was doing well and I simply looked around a bit and then closed it up and went away.
No comments:
Post a Comment