(notes from december 28, 2009)
well, first a little update...
a week or so after finding 2 hives with no brood, laney came over and lo and behold - we were in the baby bee business! both hives had larvae and agnes even had capped brood. she must have had some larvae in there that i missed last time.
the rain had prevented me from getting in the hives for a couple of weeks, so on dec 16 i checked them all just by lifting the backs of the boxes and felt the 2 to be alarmingly light. esther was heavier, but she also has one more super than the others. she was considerably heavier though, so i think some of the weight was due to honey. i ended up feeding polyxena christina and agnes starting dec 17 (i think), then the 23, then again today, the 28th.
of course i worried when i felt how light the hives were - big character flaw. keeping bees is part of the cure. i am constantly being humbled, both by the miracle of God's design and by my own ineptness. when i was a little girl, i believed that life was a storybook and every day was a different page. recently, i heard it said that God has this wonderful drama, a great story, going on. at all times, it is either a comedy or a tragedy. the question is, how will i act in either situation? adds a new dimension to that old saying about hindsight and perfect vision.
ok, back to the bees...it was too rainy to get into the hives, so i went out after dark when i knew all the bees would be in the box, and peered in the bottom with a flashlight. saw girls in both hives, hanging from the bottoms of what was probably 3 frames, maybe 4. relief! i was afraid i had let them starve.
now, i have about 8 frames of honey that i robbed (and saved) back in the fall when i was preparing to treat for mites. i'm wondering if i should divide those evenly between the supers on both hives, and if so, should the placement be directly above the brood frames that are active, even if the placement of the brood frames seems to be kind of lopsided? or if the super is indeed empty, should i remove the super and hang the shallow honey frames down in the brood box on either side of the active brood frames? if i do add shallow frames to the brood box, what are the chances of the bees building comb in the empty space at this time of year?
also, i've been reading about splits, and have had lots of interesting potential "technique" questions for laney. i THINK i will add another hive this year. if i do, i will space the hives evenly on two benches. that means that agnes' hive will have to move about 8 feet. is that a big enough move to disorient the workers? and if so, should i then move the hive far away for a while before repositioning? i've heard and read that if you move the hive farther away than right next to where it started, you have to first move it miles away for a month or so, then move it back to the new position at your apiary. something to do with reprogramming their little gps systems.
