Day 9

Checked both hives at about 1pm today, this is what I found:
Hive A(with hive top feeder):
Seems more populous than hive B, Good comb production and centralized location of the main bee colony. They are storing nectar and a small amount of pollen. Are those eggs I see in the cells, hard to tell they are so small. I will check again in a day or two. Feeder is dry to I fed them more syrup
Hive B(quart jar feeder):
Definitely less populous and advanced than Hive A. The population seems to be centrally located and producing comb but not as rapidly as Hive A. Is it possibly that with a smaller feeding surface, i.e. the jar instead of a whole top feeder more of the colony needs to forage leaving less for colony construction. I don't know but it is a good question to ask at my next bee meeting. Other than the smaller size the colony seems healthy and productive. This hive actually seems to have stored more nectar than hive A.

From Sat. April 16th

So on Saturday we were set to have some pretty big storms and I got to thinking. With the new feeder model on top of Hive B it will be very easy for rain to get in around the quart jar I installed as a feeder so I needed to cover it up. I place a an empty shallow super on top of the new lid and then put the old telescoping hive lid on top of it to keep the rain out. Then I started thinking, "They are predicting 50 to 60 mph winds. Will that knock the hives over?". So I got a tie down strap and secured both hives to the pallet. Wouldn't help in a tornado but should at least keep the lids on and the hive upright in most weather conditions. I'm glad I did these things and below you will find pictures of my rig.
At roughly 3 pm we were in the middle of one of the windiest and hardest rains I have ever witnessed in NC. The bees and I seem to have borne the weather well and stayed mostly dry and safe. NC suffered from about 20 tornadoes that day and a lot of people, only 3 to 4 miles away did not fare so well. My heart goes out to everyone in the path of those storms.

Here is a nifty read from Scientific American about the antibiotic properties of honey.

Manuka Honey

Day 5 Notes

Tomorrow will be 48 hours after freeing the queen in Hive A. I am planning to check the interior of both hives and am hoping to see a lot of drawn out comb, possibly even some eggs in Hive B as the queen has been free there longer. As the photos below show I made the new feeder for Hive B today, nothing fancy, but very functional. I am interested to see how fast the bees lap the syrup up and how quickly it needs to be re-filled. I can think of one drawback to this set up; the top is not very heavy and could easily blow off in a strong wind. It could be fastened to the hive body with buckles in the future but for now I will place some bricks on the top to keep it weighted down. Since the feeder tops don't need to be in place year round, only in times of dearth, I don't see the need to make a permanent solution to this challenge.

Here is a shot of the ladies exiting the opening to the old feeder. I wonder if they go up there and get a little lost. All these bees in the feeder aren't making comb or foraging like they should be. But, then again, maybe this water cooler behavior is common to all species.

Here is the new top and feeder I devised for Hive B. Though the quart jar is smaller than the reservoir in the old top feeder it can be easily monitored and is much easier to handle than a syrup filled box.

Music Re-fresher

Here is a link to the download of Bee Sides, 13 bee related songs ranging from artists such as Aurthur Askey to Erykah Badu:

http://rapidshare.com/files/457405002/Bee_Sides_mp3.rar

Use the free account/slow download on the right hand side of the page. It's in a compressed .rar format so you will need to decompress before listening.

Enjoy.