Friday, April 30, 2010

Another newbe mistake

I decided to look at my bees today after work. A beautiful day sunny and 87. First hive was very active bees bringing in everything . So I got the jacket on and started the smoker I need to keep this thing lit this time, so I started with some shredded phone book and pine straw. Got her going and it staid lit for the first hive inspection. I was looking for the queen, any signs of SHB or mites, tried to find some larva our anything that looks like it. But that is not the best distance for my eye  site so I settled on finding the queen. Found her on the next to last end frame. I think I need  jewelers glasses to see those tiny little eggs. This hobby keeps sucking money from you everyday. but it sure is fun and relaxing. The other good thing about having bees is that if you need some time alone you just need to suite up light the smoker and go spend time with the girls.
Well back to the girls I did not see any SHB or Verroa that is a good thing. I did see capped broad, caped honey, and watched one of the bees bringing in pollen and other bees packing it in tight. this was on 6 of the 8 frames. Wish I had workers that worked like that. The two out side new frames had no activity other then bees walking all over them.Everything looked good to this rookie so I closed it up and went to the next hive . This is were all the fun started. I followed the same steps for this hive as I did for thefirst one. I smoked the entrance. Then I lifted the top and smoked it let it sit for a few minutes. Then opened up. I took of the top hive feeder I only had it half full of sugar water and HBH just in case. about half was taken in a weeks time. I went into the second supper no activity just a bunch of bees hanging out this was a new super only on for about 5 days. So I took that off and was into the main broad Super. Every frame had something going on bees everywhere doing something. Pollen, nectar, drones, workers, But did not see the queen. like I said before, my close up eye site is not that great but I still tried to find larva, or eggs with no luck. I did find a lot of caped broad so I took that as a good sign. Well the bees were getting a little aggravated and started to make a lot of noise so I did what I thought was smoke them but boy was I wrong, all that came out of the smoker was a 3 foot yellow flame, that got my heart pumping and also fried some bees about 12 or so. But that is not the worst part. As I continued to work the bees and try to find the queen I started to smell this ripe banana smell and buy this time the bees were really get riled so as it says in the books and what everyone tells me, I just stopped what I was doing and put the hive back together. I did open each entrance to full open. It looks to me that a super full of bees should be able to take care of that entrance. One other thing both my covers started to warp . Someone on Beesource told me to turn them up side down and they would fit. I did and it worked. So things look good in the hives except for one hive that I could not find the queen.I did not see any queen cells and all seemed to bee working . The last time I looked there was a queen with a blue dot. But as I said the bees cleaned some of that off. So may be she is there but I did not see her. I will check again Saturday. I hope this little blog helps some other rookies so they learn from my mistakes.

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