Saturday, May 9, 2009

Day 24: Hive Entrance

This morning I checked around the hive and notice that the different hive bodies are not joining perfectly. There is a gap of about 1mm in several areas, which could produce too much draft. I decided to tape around the hive, at each hive body junction. Hopefully the bees will propolis all this.

Today was the first sunny day of the week, after 5 days of rain, and the bees were very busy. In the following picture, several bees are fanning, while another is coming in with pollen.

A wasp can be seen eating the sugar syrup form a leak.
The hive was very active during the whole day. I made some progress on the fence, and got thyme seeds planted in the green house for the bee yard. I plan to use creeping thyme as a ground cover for the beeyard, hopping that this will help the bees fight varroa.

Next weekend will be the second inspection (if weather allows) with inspection of brood.

2 comments:

  1. Nice looking hive, are you using all mediums ?
    You dont need to worry about the small gaps, as they fill out the box and it gets heavier they will close out, or the bees will do it. I just removed the inspection boards on mine as the ventilation should help them out.

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  2. Hi Dave,

    yes, I am using all mediums. So far I have 2 almost filled with combs. I am not confident enough to remove the frames and look for brood. I hope to do that during the next inspection.

    Thanks for commenting.
    Andre.

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