A bailey will lose honey - in that the bees will have to work hard to draw the new comb but the brood is retained. After 3 weeks you'll have empty Commercials. You could just start by putting the National on top of the commercial box until some of the frames are used, then put the queen upstairs above an excluder. Why change btw? I quite like the idea of commercials.
If one may suggest it; a first floor entrance will raise the ambiance of the occasion.Originally Posted by Adam
Adam I've been playing with these bees for six weeks now. I do know what a Baily comb change is also shook swarming. So far nothing has worked - aided I guess by the naff cold and wet weather we've been having. So more harsh methods seem to be required . I'm changing to Nationals with these two colonies as all the rest of my twenty other colonies are on national size hives ( swienty 10 frame poly nationals.) I used to beekeep on 16x10 hives when down south in Warwickshire. The bees would draw them right across but not up here - so I've reverted to nationals.
D.B. I might try an upper entrance to perhaps induce them to work in the upper national chamber, however we shall see.
Remove all the broodless combs in the bottom box, fill the spaces left on either side with dummies/polystyrene/scrunched up newspaper etc. In the topbox install the same no of frames as there are remaining in the bottom box, use drawn comb - borrow a bit from other colonies anif necessary use some foundation, insulate the sides as before. Install a feeder. Find queen or smoke her up, fit Qx and use a few laths to make a top entrance to top box directly over the old entrance which you now close and of course have plenty of insulation over the crown board. That's the gist of it - apologies if you are already familiar with the process.
Down in the tropical south we're where I'd expect to be in April. My nuc has finally given up the ghost and I think I should have moved the final few to an apidea to try and make use of the queen.
One colony I think will be starting to think about swarming next week, if I'm lucky, but still has no drones of its own but now has a good quantity of drone brood ready for action. The other has drones but is still barely filling a 14x12 and unsurprisingly has done nothing in the super I optimistically added last week. I had taken two frames of brood over successive weeks from it to try and boost the Nuc which hasn't helped I'm sure.
My aim for this year is now simply to split the two hives I ave and hopefully have 4 strong colonies going into winter. If we have a good summer I might look to bring the apideas into play later in the year but I just don't have enough bees to do everything so I'm scaling back my ambition for now.
I tried to do that (move a tiny cluster+queen to an Apidea) Neil and they absconded within 24 hours so maybe it wouldn't have worked for you anyway. Saw my first drones of 2013 during today's inspections - late or what?! I had great plans to do some queen rearing this summer but it's looking like I'll also have to scale back what I had in mind.
Yesterday was the first time I saw drones. There weren't any last week that I can recall or that I put in my inspection notes (and I have been starting to note things I would otherwise think of as ordinary this year). Jokes about tropical south aside, what I do find interesting is just how closely aligned general behaviour is between Bristol and Scotland. In the grand scheme of things, granted, geographically we're not that far apart but localised weather can be quite distinct yet over the past couple of years I can see maybe a week's 'advantage' in the behaviour of my bees (swarming etc) compared to scotland.
My slightly more carnie mongrels than my other mongrels are now starting to race ahead in terms of brood but they're stlll drone free at the moment and also benefit that in comparison to the other colony never had any brood removed, but were a smaller colony when I eventually managed to start inspections and I'm now only just starting to think that I need to start a weekly inspection routine to watch for swarming.
So the official winter losses for Germany are published now.
From the 7000 beekeepers that responded, of their 88000 colonies 13000 did not make it through the winter. So 15,3% losses.
Very acceptable I'd say... I felt like writting this in the special place, but trolling there has lost its appeal.
8°C here today, even Scotland is warmer.. Lucky most colonies are sitting on a full super - the clement weather we had in early may was profitable for the bees.
Your bees need to be tough Calum
Sometimes folk think Continental weather is all sun and surf
todays news
Not this part of Scotland Calum, 8 degrees here today and drizzle, though it was quite balmy over the weekend with a high of 14. However I am still wondering whether I'm being optimistic if I add first supers on the next warmer day
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks