Temple hive

I went to beekeeping meeting last night and talked to a few people about our troublesome girls. Someone told me they also have a hive like that and they also put a wet super (super that has had honey extracted from it) on the hive for extra food.

The general consensus was that if the bees haven't eaten all the fondant they are not hungry and that if they are busy bringing pollen into the hive then all is well and not to worry.

So I'm going to try not worrying and pour the sugar syrup down the sink!

Garden Hive treatment

So I finished the Garden Hive's intensive hive clean treatment on Friday and started doing a daily mite drop count yesterday. So far no varroa - hurray!

I think I may need to feed the Temple hive - hive is feeling very light but bees are out and about regularly now.

Busy bees

Temple hive - daily mite drop

Besides shutting the bees in this morning - I calculated the daily mite drop for the Temple hive.  The sheet had been in the hive for a week and I counted 16 mite divided by 7 days of the week equals 2.2 mites a day.  This is a much better ratio than the Garden hive and better for this time of year. 

After the workmen had finished the fence I took the gaffer tape off the entrances.  I decided to put the wet super on the Temple hive since it is feeling a bit light and since I took the crown board off to put on a queen excluder I decided to give this hive one treatment of hive clean just to keep those Varroa levels down. 

Bees and the builders

I've had to gaffer tape the hive entrances up this morning - thank goodness that it is a cold and frosty one.
The next door neighbours are replacing the garden fence and the bees took against the workmen yesterday.  Poor workmen just got stung and couldn't finish the job.  Hopefully they will have finished the fence by the time it is warm enough for the bees to want to go out.