Sunday, April 16, 2017

Hiving Honeybees 2017

Today, I demonstrated how to hive honeybees after the shipment arrived. I did not remove the cork from the queen cage to give the bees a couple more days to get acquainted with their new mother. They have only been in the shipping box with their queen for a couple days. On Monday, 4/17/17 or Tuesday, 4/18/17 I will remove the cork and place a mini marshmallow into the queen cage entrance being careful not to allow the queen to escape.  At this time I will also top off the inner feeder with sugar water. Every three days I will top off the sugar feeder. Folks with bare foundation don't have to do a complete hive check for a couple weeks while the female workers are building honeycomb. With the cold weather we try to disrupt the colony as little as possible. When topping off the sugar water every three days, I don't try to lift frames out of the hive or find the queen. I just simply lift the lids off, pour the water in the feeder and shut the lids making sure they are aligned well with the hive body. Looking at the weather report, the best day for hiving will be Sunday, April 16, 2017 as temperatures are dropping over the next week. I will hive five more colonies tomorrow - 4/16/17 at 3:30PM if anyone wants to observe. Please arrive at 605 Betty Street at 3:30PM if you would like to join me. We will be traveling a few blocks away to the Chena River where we will hive two colonies and then to Creamer's Field for another three colonies.

9 comments:

  1. Thanks Dawn! We'll hive ours today as well!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don wants to know if you have an extra buckfast queen?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, we do. If you can be at my house at 3:30PM I can give you one. They are $30.00 and I will send the money to Steve Victors.

      Delete
    2. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  3. Dawn, we had a dead buckfast queen dead on arrival. Luckily we had ordered a double queen pqckage. I spoke to Steve, and he said to contact you for a replacement. Let me know when a good time for you would be to pick her up. Thanks for the blog updates...we really appreciate them! Erobertsnyc@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Dawn,

    When will you do having the demo this weekend. We don't want to miss it!
    Thank you in advance,

    Monica

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I will be completing full-hive checks on 7 colonies this Sunday 4/23/17 at 3:00PM. 605 Betty Street

      Delete
    2. Thank you.

      We checked several times and somehow missed the time. Is there any other way in which we can be notified about the times we may shadow you , so we have time to plan? Will they always be on a Sunday afternoon? Thank you.

      Delete