Friday, May 21, 2010

Observation 5-20-2010


Today was a great day to be a bee. The previous 2 days were wet and rainy, and a little chilly. While there were a few brave souls out and about, most of the bees just stayed inside. Well today, they were making up for it!

Over the weekend I had created a couple of nucs. I actually saw some foragers coming and going from the gray nuc - I understood that if there were any foragers included when you make a nuc, those will really return to the parent hive (due to their imprinting of location). But either some of the foragers reoriented, or there were some new foragers ready to fly. In any case, there is activity in both nucs which is good to see. Even the brown hive had quite a few bees flying around.

Here's a quick video I took of the activity. This was later in the afternoon, so double the number of bees you see coming and going, and you can understand how it was earlier in the day. Most of the bees in the video are coming in - it's the foragers returning with their goods.




I also took a couple of close-up shots of the nucs:



You can actually see a couple of bees outside the gray nuc if you zoom in.

Note that the cinder blocks started tilting when it rained (I guess the ground softened). So I used a couple of wedges to make sure the nuc sits up level. This weekend I'll re-set the cinder blocks to be level.

3 comments:

  1. Your hives are doing well if you are making splits (nucs)! I just bought a couple nucs today to install. Did you give them a queen or will you let them make their own?

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  2. What are the circular vents for? Is there a reason you would close off the entrance?

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  3. Barbara - I made the splits with frames which already had a queen swarm cell on it. So they were in process of making their own.

    Todd - the circular disc has settings for different needs - all open, ventilation only (closed to bee traffic), and one which only lets workers through, or keeps the drone out.

    You would want to close it up when you move the nuc.

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