The inspection continues - part two

I'm using the hive tool to separate the medium from the brood chamber deep hive body on the bottom. I pried the two sections apart as gently as I could.
Now we're down to the bottom level. This is the brood chamber - LOOK AT THE BEES! There are bees by the thousands in this hive.
What can I say! Look at the bees
Here I've lifted the hive body off of the screened bottom board - look at the bees hanging on the bottom of the hive body in the upper right corner of the picture. I loosened the bungee cords to the robber screen, but it fell off with a crash and bees went everywhere. Look at all of them flying above the SBB.

Inspecting the hives

Because of Father's Day and the birth of my first grandbaby, I had house visitors. My daughter Becky took these pictures of my hive inspection this weekend.

First I blow the tiniest smoke announcement at the front of the hive to let the bees know that I am about to disrupt their day. This will be my first inspection in two weeks due to the robbing activity that was happening. If I find no evidence of robbing, I'll remove the robber screens.


In the second picture, I've removed the top cover and the inner cover and am about to work on the top super of Destin. I lifted it off and found that it was really light. The bees had not drawn out the foundation and there was little honey in this super. We are not in a honey flow at this time in Georgia, so I imagine this super will not be drawn out this year - disappointment.
I use a little smoke on top of the second super before I removed it. It was very heavy and full of mostly capped honey. Most of the frames were capped on the side nearest the center and uncapped on the outside facing side of the frame.
I usually stack the supers on the side and inspect them there. Today I needed to go all the way down because my plan is to put a slatted rack between the screened bottom board and the brood super - the deep one on the bottom.

(You can see the slatted rack leaning against the tree in the first picture)

Bees passing nectar through SBB

With the robber screen on, robbing has stopped, but the bees are using the screened bottom board as a way to pass nectar into the hive.

Maybe I should now remove the robber screen when I next inspect the hives.



The other way they are passing nectar in is through this crack opening on one side of Destin where the screen isn't held too tightly.

Installed the new robber screen

With bees buzzing all around me, I screwed two screw eyes into the back of Bermuda - one on each side.

I used an 18" bungee cord to connect the robber screen to the back screw eye on each side of the hive.


Here you can see everything connected. This was not as upsetting for the bees, since they have been getting used to the robber screen for two days. I put the new screen on Bermuda since it has had a robbing problem. I set the old screen on its side until tonight when finally all the bees had left the old screen and returned to the hive.

Tonight I put screw eyes in to the sides of my original effort at making a robber screen and screwed screw eyes into the back of Destin.

Tomorrow while the bees are flying, I'll install the robber screen on Destin.

I also made a cleat (not sure if I'm using this term correctly?) for each hive so that I could completely close them up if need be. In Jon McFadden's plan for building a robber screen from scratch, he used a router to make a cleat for the top entrance.....

OK, I don't know what a router is, much less what it does. But I did want to be able to close the hive up, so I cut a piece of the wood I used for the side shim the length of the opening at the top of the robber screen. Then I nailed a nail into each end to give the wood a way to hold it up in the opening. So here it is in the picture - although I won't use the cleat unless I truly need to close the hive.

Building a more sophisticated robber screen (still for the construction-challenged)

OK, first of all
1. Measure the height of the shim needed to put behind the adjustable window screen and mark the wood.
2. Saw along the marked line

3. At the approximate center of the shim, drill a hole with a drill bit smaller than the center of the thread of the screw you are going to use

4. Lubricate the threads of the screw by scraping it across a bar of soap....this (for the construction-challenged) helps the screw go into the wood smoothly and with less effort.

5. Screw the screw eye into the sides of the shim, using the drilled hole to help you get started. You can put the blade of a screwdriver into the screw eye to turn it more easily.
6. Voila! The finished robber screen, ready to be used with bungee cords.

The Battle Continues

This morning the battle continues. I can't tell if the robber screen is effective or if the bees at this hive are so confused by it that they are not doing well.

There are bees everywhere, angry buzzing, and battling bees falling to the ground in front of the hive. At the same time there are a huge number of bees crawling under the hive - I do have a screened bottom board and maybe they are trying to get in that way - which won't happen because there's no opening.

There is a small entry level opening in this robber screen. The pattern for it on the Internet says that it should have one entry level opening in case a virgin queen is developed and needs to get in.

The opening is evident in the middle picture. The bees can get in where I didn't make the shim quite flush with the bottom of the screen (will do better on the second robber screen that I will build today). I may need to block that with duct tape or a piece of wood. You can see bees going in to the hive there.

I am also worried about the bungee cord. I may need to drill holes in the sides of the frame for the hooks for the bungee so that the cord can hook there since the bees seem (in the third picture) to be very confused by the bungee.

What I am calling confused bees may be the robbers who are trying to get into the hive entrance. I am trying hard to be a beeKEEPER rather than a beeHAVER but this robbing behavior is quite a challenge.

View of the robber screen at night

Here you can really see the clumps of bees inside the screen. I wondered if those bees still left on the outside belong to this hive or are they connected to the robbers?

Will the Robber Screen Work?

This view looks down into the robber screen from the top. You can see that the top allows the bees entry to the hive. At the time I installed the robber screen on Bermuda, the bees were furious and climbed up and down the screen from the outside.







I didn't have the right length of bungee cord, so for the moment, I have rigged it together with three cords and the fence. I'll fix it tomorrow.
When I came home tonight, the bees at Bermuda had for the most part, found their way into the screen and are clustering inside the screen for the night. There are a few on the outside - wonder if they are unable to find the HUGE upper opening!