So the weather the past weekend was good with sunshine in the late part of the morning. Things would dry out a bit and inspections and observations were possible. The overcast starting around 5:00 pm through the nite.
My theory is that for the four packages it wasn't all bad as the rain meant they had to get used to the hive boxes and would be encouraged to stay..... I installed packages one time nice weather and half of the bees left.
Also while their number are low...the tendency to defend is less as they build up in numbers. All five colonies are at the same stage building laying eggs and bringing in pollen and nectar. My theory is all colonies are perceived by me as docile towards the beekeeper when numbers are low. Note a three pound package will have roughly 12,000 bees. That sounds like a lot...12,000 of anything sounds like a lot doesn't it?
The underlying point here is there are several functions this group of bees has to do. There are roles to fulfill like nurse the queen, clean maintain the hive, defend the hive, forage and how do the bees decide who is doing what. So a bit on what I know, when an egg is layer in cells that cell is immaculate. When I installed the package the frames I used were in various stages of use and some while having hoeny, pollen and bee bread (mix of the two) some of the frames even had bees that were frozen from the winter that I couldn't get out. Who is going to clean them out.
So the bees in each package had some work to do. I put syrup in the feeders and they took some but not all of the food. There are periods to forage and on the weekend they worked but didn't 'attack' the syrup. I then decided to mark the queens in all five hives but could only get two marked. The other three were elusive, so I'll do it them next weekend.
Note the marking was only to help identify if the colony swarmed easier.no other reason.... and I used last year's color....blue.
Further updates to follow.
No comments:
Post a Comment