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My Archives: January 2007

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Well I finally managed to get everything into place with the new observation hive. I have left the bees that were in the duck box in the duck box. However I have taken out the bottom of the duck box and placed it inside of 4 medium hive boxes and screwed the duck box to the inside of the four medium hive boxes.

This places the bottom of the bees in the duck box just above the observation hive and the frames that are in the observation hive. This way the bees come out the bottom of the duck box and find the new frames in the observation hive. Hopefully this addes space will encourage more growth in the spring.

I also hope it encourages them to move bees down so that I can take the observation hive to the fair on the weekends when they need it. It would be nice to have a bunch of bees in the observation hive for the fair when they need it.

I don't think this will be the stellar display since the bees are just moving in but next year is going to rock.

I will take pictures of the observation hive at the fair.

The first thing I noticed with the observation hive is the number of dead bees. Not due to illness just old age. Bees that die get hauled out by other bees. The problem is all my bees are being forced to reorient since they are in a new location and about 10' away from where they use to be. Also the weather has been a bit cold.

So workers grab dead bee bodies and bad embryo bees and try to haul them out. Since they aren't quite sure where the entrance is they are wandering. After a while they drop the bodies. I suspect more will get a clue tomorrow and the cleaning will be more efficent tomorrow.

You can see the new pictures here

I think this observation hive is going to be awesome.

Posted by understudy @ 05:23 PM EST [Link]

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