The weather hasn't decided it if is Fall or Winter yet, so we are getting some ups and downs. It rained a bunch the past couple of days, and today it was dry and 65 - go figure! So I decided it was a good day to remove the Apistan strips (medication for mite prevention). It was right at the recommended time, and I don't want to leave them in too long.
Due to the warm weather, the bees were out buzzing around the hive today. It was good to see that - during cold times, you never know what is going on in the hive.
I also decided to mix up another batch of sugar syrup to feed the bees. I had checked on them last week, and they had almost emptied the jars. I noticed one jar apparently leaked, and there was a bunch of syrup puddled on the top board. Today when I checked, the syrup was gone - the bees took care of it.
When I mix up a batch, I use a 10# bag of sugar (I am making concentrated syrup, 2 parts sugar to one part water). A bag of sugar fills up my six one-quart jars plus leaves about 1 1/2 quart left over.
The Green hive was doing well - saw lots of bees when I opened things up. But when I opened the Brown hive, I didn't see the same strength of bees (almost no bees greeted me when I popped off the top inner cover). I don't know if the hive has lost her queen or not - I guess time will tell (even if the hive is queenless, now is not the time to do anything about it). If it turns out to be queenless, it'll probably die off during the winter. If that's the case, I'll see what I want to do in the spring.
I took the picture at the top this afternoon. The hives look a little lonely just sitting there among the leafless-trees...
I won't know until spring but of my 2 hives, the one that is heavy enough that it doesn't need feeding (I'm feeding it anyway) has less activity, both when lifting the outer cover off and at the front stoop than my other hive which I was told could use feeding. I wonder if the bees know they need to go out more on the lighter hive? Spring will tell I guess when I can open the hives and have a closer look and comparison between the 2 hives.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing I forgot to mention was that during the warm weather today, there was more activity outside the brown hive than the green hive. Go figure!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I ended up getting a 2nd hive late in the summer - it's good to compare and contrast; otherwise I wouldn't know what is good or bad in the hive.