Andrew Siwko’s Blog #2

Jay came over and we looked at the hive and talked for a while about bees.  The video is 14 minutes which I know is way too long for you to watch, so I sped it up to 4X.  You get a full inspection in only three and a half minutes.  Enjoy!

Today I took the two funny shaped combs and moved them to the back of the hive with some space around them.  My hope is that the brood will hatch and the bees will clean out this comb and replace it with straighter comb.

I’ve noticed that the comb curves off the guide at one end of the bar.  You can see a corner of unsupported comb falling off in the video.  I put it on top of the hive then brought it in and put it on a plate.  John said it tasted very nice.  What I’m wondering is whether I made my triangle guides too short.

I also noticed that the bees are resisting the guides and building farther out.  Maybe they’ve finished with brood and want to move to honey spacing?  I’ve also noticed that they started two combs on the bar at the back (the first one you see in the video).  Maybe I need to paint the triangles with wax.  It seemed to work for the center bars.

I still need to number the bars for reference.  I saw three large hive beetles.  I got one of them with the hive tool.  Maybe I need a real roof?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 10th, 2011 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Bees. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.