Recording video attempt FAIL :(
photo credit: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201678
Today, on one of the hottest days of the summer of 2018, I went into our hives to perform general maintenance. It was so hot, my camera shut off before I could get too much work done on film. So to catch everyone up, I made a video after my phone cooled down a bit. Even after it cooled down, however, you can see the video quality is poor from the overheating.
The queen cell is the long one that looks like a finger.
Our bees have been making some pretty advanced queen cells. Once the bees have filled all the room in the hive, they will create a queen cell and hatch a new queen. Once the new queen is born, the old queen rounds up half to two thirds of the hive and moves on to another place to colonize, the result is a swarm.
A swarm can be good. It is good for the environment, and good for bees in the community. Given we needed to buy two new hives for the 2018 season, another swarm will not be so good for us
Brood boxes are the larger of the two types.
I will be reaching out to get some consultation on how we might do a walk away split. A walk away split is when a beekeeper splits a hive with two brood boxes (the larger boxes on the hive stand) by putting one brood box on a new stand to create an entirely new hive.
As long as all the bees are kept alive over the 2018/19 winter, we may not need to buy bees again. This is a point to which we did not get last year. The hives were too docile to fend off thieves and unfortunately not insulated enough for the cold. But if the walk away split is a viable option for us, our costs will go way down for next year!
Stay tuned for even more content, coming soon!
~Chris, The Boxing Beekeeper
We don't have video from this maintenance session because it was too hot outside for the camera! Here's the follow up