We had very nice weather this weekend with temps in the low 70's both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, we opened and checked our hives. This was our first time of venturing into the hives since last Fall.
Hive 4 was set-up as deep hive body for brood box, medium hive body, and a honey super left over from Fall. The honey super was an accident. It was on the hive when we treated with Api Life VAR and so we could not harvest the honey. We expected that most of the bees would have moved up to the medium super and that the bottom hive would be mostly empty. Indeed, that is exactly what had happened. So, we switched the bottom where the medium was and put the medium on the bottom. We left the honey super on top and removed the insulating panel that had been on all Winter. We also left the ventilation spacer on the hive. The hive had brood, honey, and pollen and we saw The Queen. We didn't see any hive beetles in this hive.
Hives 1, 2, and, 3 were set-up as deep was set-up deep with medium, insulating panel, and ventilation spacer. When we went into Hive 3, we were able to configure it the same as Hive 4. The hive had brood, honey, and pollen, but we did NOT see the queen. We saw one hive beetle in this hive.
Hive 2 was a complete surprise! When we opened the hive, the deep and medium hive bodies were completely filled with brood, honey, and pollen. There was absolutely no room for any more brood, honey, or pollen. We were not really prepared, so we added a honey super to give the bees a little more room. We saw several hive beetles in this hive.
After Hive 2's surprise, we called it a day and decided to re-think our plans.
On Sunday afternoon, we implemented a new plan. We went back to Hive 4, and added a medium hive body. This gave us the final configuration of Medium - Deep - Deep (with 9 frames) - Honey Super (with 2 frames removed). We placed the 2 frames on our hanging rack and we're hoping that the bees will clean out the honey. If they do, we plan to hang the rest of the frames out for cleaning. We would like to reuse the foundation, but the honey has to be removed.
Hive 3's configuration is now Medium - Deep - Deep (with 9 frames).
Hive 2's configuration is now Deep - Medium - Deep (with 9 frames) - Honey Super.
The photo above was taken from Hive 1. We had not been in Hive 1 for several months. It may have been July or earlier. The hive was completely full, similar to Hive 2. We set it up with Deep - Medium - Deep (with 9 frames). There was quite a bit of drone brood. We saw varroa mites in a few of the drone brood cells. There were a few hive beetles.
We are trying to avoid swarming on all of our hives. We planned to split all of our hives this Spring. Since this is only our second season and it may be a good thing that we "don't know what we don't know".
In 2 to 3 weeks, we will check the hives again to see if our plan to prevent swarming and creating splits is working.
