Like Allen sead inspection is very important. Please make sure you are feeding them enough. Rainy weather is like a dearth. The bees can not get out to gather pollen or nectar so feeding them is crucial.
John
This time of year the bees are bringing back more nectar and honey than you may think.
If you overfeed the bees they will back fill the brood chamber and the queen won't be able to provide enough eggs for the hive to grow in population. This is called being honey bound.
If you must feed do it by feeding one week and not feeding the next so the bees can process and use or cap what they have.
If the hive is not growing and you have undrawn frames in the hive move the outer (storage frames) frames occuppied by the bees over one frame and place an undrawn frame between it and the other frames the bees are on. Do this on each side of the bee cluster.
The bees will move off of the storage frames and begin drawing out the new frames, this will use up some of the stores from the brood chamber. It will also provide new combs for the queen to aly eggs in. This action enlarges the brood chamber while curing the honey bound problem, therby allowing the hive to begin to increase its population.
Bees will move off of storage combs but will not move off of brood combs.
Bees will draw new comb when the population of the hive is sufficient to force the bees to occupy more space. Bees only work under foot.
If you allow a package to become honey bound they will stay nuc size forever, or they will dwindle and die because they can't rear enough brood to grow and might not even be able to rear enough brood to retain its initial size.
If you have bees in a hive that are only occupying a few frames, yet are making burr comb, the hive is oney bound, moving the frames is necessary to cure the problem.
Feeding only makes this condition worse, regardless of the weather.
Topic: 1st year newbie (Read 1674 times)