Sjoerd, We call them queen excluders here, but after I used one I called it a honey excluder because the bees didn't go above it for me. so there was no honey in the supers to harvest . I forgot to mention earlier...Some queens are small enough to fit through the spacing and do get above the excluder and as they mature they can't fit back through and eventually it can be their demise. queen excluder ( photo / image / picture from carolyn keiper's Garden ) New swarm set up in their new home. ( photo / image / picture from carolyn keiper's Garden ) She landed on my finger as I went to close the shed door after getting the excluder out to take a picture for you. she looks to be saying "hello?" Hello? ( photo / image / picture from carolyn keiper's Garden )
chuckle--what a cute bee-shot. She really DOES look like she is saying, "Hello", doesn't she. Thanks for the pics. I see that your excluders look the same as the ones that we have over here. I appreciate your tips and comments too, Re: queen size and transmigration. The new home for that new swarm looks pretty good to me. Do you already have a honey super up above the two brood boxes? When will you look in the hives again with this new swarm?
S, This was such a large swarm that I decided to give them the super so they could start storing nectar to make honey, since the foundation is already drawn and they don't need to use all their stores to make new comb, they will need the space to dehydrate the nectar into honey. As long as they look busy and there is activity going on at the entrance and at the crack between the two bodies, I won't bother looking at them for at least a month (maybe even longer as I will be getting even busier in the garden).
Terry, it was so light I couldn't even feel her. The only reason I knew she was there was I felt the air movement from her wings when she landed. It is not like a beetle that clings to you, when they light on you to rest, you can't even feel it.
Jerry, it is hard to take a head count in here, they keep moving so I guestimate there are several thousand to start the home off. So I have LOTS of new friends. I was thinking of having a name contest but I figured EVERYBODY would win and I still wouldn't have enough names for all of them. In an established hive there could be upwards of 50,000 or more bees. thats a lot of names.
I see Carolyn....but will you not be checking the honey super to see if the windows in that get full so that you and add another?
S, that, I will do. I just won't open it and disrupt the entire hive by going through the entirely frame by frame. That seems to really slow down the production more than anything else. Last year I didn't open the hives at all during the summer and I had full honeysupers when I went to pull them. My friend down the road had virtually none, I don't know if it was only because of the weather or that I didn't get in and disrupt the "workflow" and he was checking his out all the time. A new beekeeper stopped here the other day (not for bee keeping, he didn't know I had bees) and asked about checking for mites. I said I watch the ground for new bees with deformed wings. This is not the recommended method, but it works for me. I don't disrupt them and I can see if there is a mite problem going on.
Well, your method of beekeeping sounds very sensible to me. I do not believe that your full supers last year were a coincidence. I have the feeling that disturbing the bees too often is not good for their work methods, but also I would imagine that the hive temps would fluctuate to much and too often to be helpful. There is a chap in Great Britain that does bee keeping in a way similar to yours. He does not interfere with the bees (almost) at all, and says that he trys and mimic the way things would go if they were in nature, inhabiting an old hollow tree or something. It makes sense to me, but most of the beekeepers here scoff at this logic. Anyway, thanks for your continuing info...your thoughts and foto's sure makes interesting reading.
