The Queens Need Some Room

This weekend any time I spent working on bees was spent making room in the brood chamber for the queen to expand her nest.  I decided it was time to reevaluate my decision making paradigm and listen to the voices of experience.  Last winter two of the three colonies I had only had a single deep brood chamber and nothing else.  They both perished over winter in spite of my feeding efforts.  Vinduska, a local honey producer, recently stated to our yahoo group that single brood box colonies don't do very well during Kansas winters.  I believe that what he is saying is that the colony is not big enough at the start of winter and it doesn't have enough stores put away to last the winter.

Therefore, I decided that the two small colonies that I have, one of which was from a split and the other had a failing queen, really needed an extra brood box to give the queen room and allow the workers to put more stores away.  This means that I won't get any honey from them this year.  My attitude has to be that they are an investment and I should get a return next year if I take good care of them.   I will probably make this a part of my method of procedure for the smaller half of splits and nucleus colonies.

Also, I purchased a colony from a friend just recently.  He had become discouraged and wanted out.  The colony I purchased also had no room in the brood chamber for the queen.  This colony was housed in two medium depth boxes, and what space was not full of larvae or capped brood was full of honey (and I mean a lot of honey).  To give the queen room to expand the colony I added a full depth brood box on top of the small boxes.  I also removed any queen cells just in case.  They weren't in use but I don't want to take any chances.  To this colony I also added a queen excluder and a honey super.  They are very numerous and I just might get some surplus.  We'll see.

Below are before and after pictures of the colony I purchased.  I had already installed the super and as an after thought decided they really need room in the brood chamber.

Tom and Nuc before I added new deep brood boxes.

New hive before I removed the old boxes and added the new deep brood box.

After my work is done.

The bees have a new home.

I got tired of fighting the weeds and overhanging branches during my inspections and decided to do something about it.  We installed a 10'x6' weed barrier mat, covered it with cedar mulch, and moved the colonies onto the mat.   In the process we brought the colonies away from the hedge apple trees and out of the weeds.  This will allow me to mow both sides of the hives without disturbing the colonies too much.  I am pretty sure they'll appreciate the consideration.  I will also be able to trim the trees a little without dropping branches onto the hives.

Once we installed the barrier and mulch where we wanted it I moved the colonies a couple of feet each week or so until they were in position.  Below are some pictures of the process.  By only moving them a couple of feet at a time the field bees don't remain confused for very long about where their colony went.   They quickly re-orient to their new home-site.

From left to right the hives are named "McFadden", "Tom", and "Nuc".  Tom is the original hive I installed in the spring of 2011 and they have a new queen this spring.  McFadden is a hive I purchased from a good friend last fall and Nuc is a split I made this spring from the McFadden colony.  Some of my previous posts talk more about the bees travails this last winter and spring.

An excellent article in the Wichita Eagle about beekeeping

The link is to an excellent article published in the Wichita Eagle on July 6th.  I know the Vinduska's and they are excellent folks.

http://www.kansas.com/2013/07/06/2878084/saving-honeybees-one-hive-at-a.html