Checking if Artificial Swarm Worked
This week we went over to Tom's place to check and see how the artificial swarm was doing, and if our efforts to prevent a real swarm had worked.
Artificial Swarm:
We opened the nuc we stored the artificial swarm into.
And was happy to see plenty of bees, capped brood and the old marked queen.
We closed it back up and moved onto the other hives. We'll come back in a few days and move this artificial swarm into a full size box.
Hive 2:
This is the hive we took the old queen from and made the artificial swarm from last week.
When we checked them today, we didn't want to disturb them, because the capped queen cells we saw might have just opened, or would be opening soon.
We were able to guess with a fairly high level of confidence based on the number of bees in the hive that they had not swarmed. So far the artificial swarm seems to be working.
They are happy drawing out super frames and filling them with fresh nectar.
Hive 3:
This hive has a very active queen who's doing her best to make as many bees as possible. Thankfully we haven't seen any swarm cells yet.
These guys are bringing in nectar into their super hives and starting to cap it too.
Hive 4:
This hive has had sugar syrup on them as they needed to draw out a couple of new deep frames this year. This is a classic frame as shown in many beekeeping books.
Capped brood on the bottom of the frame, an arch of fresh nectar and pollen above, and capped honey at the very top.
While we were pulling frames to see how they were doing, we spotted the queen in this hive.
This hive was doing so well and drew it's frames, we decided it was time to pull it's feeder and add a super.
We put together a box full of super frames and put it on top of their brood boxes.
Here is a picture of how we left them. Each hive has at least one super on it, and the artificial swarm has a jar of syrup to help them out until they get a large supply of foragers going again.
We'll be back soon to check on them and bring a full size box for the artificial swarm.
Artificial Swarm:
We opened the nuc we stored the artificial swarm into.
And was happy to see plenty of bees, capped brood and the old marked queen.
We closed it back up and moved onto the other hives. We'll come back in a few days and move this artificial swarm into a full size box.
Hive 2:
This is the hive we took the old queen from and made the artificial swarm from last week.
When we checked them today, we didn't want to disturb them, because the capped queen cells we saw might have just opened, or would be opening soon.
We were able to guess with a fairly high level of confidence based on the number of bees in the hive that they had not swarmed. So far the artificial swarm seems to be working.
They are happy drawing out super frames and filling them with fresh nectar.
Hive 3:
This hive has a very active queen who's doing her best to make as many bees as possible. Thankfully we haven't seen any swarm cells yet.
These guys are bringing in nectar into their super hives and starting to cap it too.
Hive 4:
This hive has had sugar syrup on them as they needed to draw out a couple of new deep frames this year. This is a classic frame as shown in many beekeeping books.
Capped brood on the bottom of the frame, an arch of fresh nectar and pollen above, and capped honey at the very top.
While we were pulling frames to see how they were doing, we spotted the queen in this hive.
This hive was doing so well and drew it's frames, we decided it was time to pull it's feeder and add a super.
We put together a box full of super frames and put it on top of their brood boxes.
Here is a picture of how we left them. Each hive has at least one super on it, and the artificial swarm has a jar of syrup to help them out until they get a large supply of foragers going again.
We'll be back soon to check on them and bring a full size box for the artificial swarm.
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