Again I had a helper (oldest daughter just moved here to start teaching at my old school) who had a blast handling the bees and the "up close and personal" of a hive inspection.
We moved the old hive aside and placed the large hive box in to its place
Then we transferred the bars with comb on them across to the new hive box.
We did find the queen but her performance is definitely declining
Finally I shook the last few bees into the new hive
And we put the lid on and closed up the hive
During this shift we found absolutely no honey stores or pollen.
Falling rain stopped the inspection of the "Grass" hive - a bigger population of bees - active all the time.
For the next week the bees also hadn't found the entrance at the back of the hive box into the feeder station. So was hoping to get time to find a solution to this.
Home early from work one yesterday- and no one else home to distract me - I quickly got into my bee suit
I use a bee suit as I have a phobia of things buzzing about my head - this increases my anxiety which I guarantee the bees pick up on this! yes a phobia but love the bees!
I am far more efficient and confident with a suit on then with out it. I no longer use gloves but really like my good boots and ensure the cuffs of the bee suit are secure over them
Anyway this time I didn't wear boots, so my feet just had 'crocs' on (soft plastic shoes - look them up most comfortable shoes ever!) and thus the ankles were wide open to the elements and subsequently the bees - I was nervous even before I started stoking the smoker.
So, now into the solution for Post hive not accessing the feeder station
I removed 10 rear top bars and slide the rest of the bars with comb etc towards the rear of the large hive box. and placed the removed top bars towards the front. hope it works and doesn't effect the way the bees operate too much - this hive not the strongest - might have to replace the queen.
I also checked for cross burring of combs - some were very thick wider than the 32mm top bars I have (have plans to use a queen excluder and past this excluder some 40mm top bars for honey comb)
Again the lack or scarcity of honey or pollen stores was a concern - haven't seen any trees flowering for a while either.
The solution worked as within half an hour the post hive hod found the feeder station/
Next to the bigger hive for a check up
The bigger hive had its bees working up a frenzy from some source for a week but hardly a bee is seen returning with pollen on its legs recently. There is a "weed" in the horse paddocks the ladies are working but I am about it spray it with broad leaf weed killer - so even this source of food will expire shortly - the wet season so hard for bees up here in Darwin.
I then opened up the "Grass" hive - heaps of bees, a very strong hive in numbers
But for the first time I found them quite aggressive towards me
Was it lack of food - "hangry" (hungry-angry) bees??
Could have been the weather conditions in the late afternoon - about to rain, windy, hot!
Could have just been my anxiety of exposed ankles?
Found several cross comb areas - but pissed off bees and my nervousness ended the inspection before I looked at last 10 bars, those with the most bees and comb on them.
Need to get in there within a week as again lots of burring of comb and who knows what else
thankfully this hive cleans out the feeder station rapidly but they too had very little honey and pollen stores - some but not a lot
So more substitute feeding needed both hive - along these lines thinking of planting a 200m hedge of some sort of flowering plant (flowering Jasmine) along the outer edge of my rural block to help the dearth of local flowering trees
until next inspection
enjoy your bees!
