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Author Topic: A stranger shows up  (Read 3561 times)

Offline Kris^

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A stranger shows up
« on: August 07, 2004, 08:19:59 pm »
Man, the more I learn, the less I know.  By accident, I located my marked queen this afternoon, the one I thought had been superceded.

The colony is doing well in spite of my "help."  They are drawing comb and storing nectar in the second honey super, and have filled much of the first super with honey.  There's still a lot of brood in the first super, from when the queen was in there laying.  But about six frames are all honey, although not all of it is capped.  So my plan to spin off some honey today will have to wait a while yet.  

So I went into the lower boxes to see what was going on in them.  The upper brood box still had many frames of capped honey, with most of the rest capped and uncapped brood.  In the bottom box I found that the bees were collecting a lot of many different colors of pollen.  There was also honey stored on the outer frames, and the rest a whole lot of empty comb.  That's where I found my old marked queen, walking on the comb and looking to lay more eggs.  Jeez, I hadn't seen her for two months, and thought she was long gone.

The inspection was much calmer today.  I took extra care to pull the frames straight up and crushed very few in the process; they seemed to like that much better.   :lol:    Probably why I was able to get all the way into the hive and find the queen that I'd been missing for so long.

The more I know, the more I need to learn.  Hey, soon I'll be learning about over-wintering!

-- Kris

Offline golfpsycho

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A stranger shows up
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2004, 10:50:33 am »
I'm keeping track.  I don't think it's been 2 weeks since your last adventure in the hive. tsk tsk tsk  bahahahahahahahahah  Sounds like it's all working out.  good on ya

Offline Kris^

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A stranger shows up
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2004, 11:37:19 pm »
It was 9 days exactly, and not a day more . . . !   :P    :lol:

Offline TEN

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Pulling Supers
« Reply #3 on: August 11, 2004, 02:43:30 pm »
I, like you, have hives that have utilized much of the lower hive bodies for brood chambers.  To allow the bees to fill those empty spaces (formerly brood chambers) with honey I pull my supers by August 15.  This allows them to fill the brood chambers with the fall honey flow (goldenrod etc.).  The fall honey, in my opinion, seems to have a stronger taste and doesn't appeal to the pallet.  :)

 

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