Re. Bill T’s comments:
Thanks for the reality check. Season has been good here, too. Just had five days of 90+ temps and no rain in two weeks, which really dried things out (brutally, in fact, looking at the corn), but now it is raining, finally. Hives have been gaining wait until now and only started leveling off the past couple of days. May see another spike a couple of days after this rain as things pop, but expect next real flow will be the goldenrod, some of which is already in bud. Quite a difference from last year. Will see how this winter goes and might try your supering method next year (too late now).
I agree with your point about Allen’s honey type as a problem and maybe didn’t make that clear in my long-winded post. I get LOTS of goldenrod and aster here. Personally, I like the honey, but it sets up fast. Left it all for the bees last year, because the season was so bad. They seem to have cleaned most of it up this year.
I don’t know if screened bottom boards help much for ventilation, especially since I have mine over solid bottom boards with trays in between, but they do catch a few mites, and it is an easy way to assess what’s going on in the hive without going inside. For example, when I pull the trays from behind, I can see where the bees are uncapping honey or brood, whether it is old comb, new comb, how much they are working, relative location of the cluster to front, back, left right, etc.
Re. Don A’s comments:
I can’t move my hives around like that, but I am thinking about not using the top entrances of my shims this winter. Because of the location of my hives, the bottom entrances haven’t been covered with snow for more than a day or so in the last several years. With all the ventilation, don’t need the top entrances for air flow, so might close off half and see if there is a difference between the two groups.
Re. Allen’s comments:
Sorry, missed the wax question. Didn’t seem to matter in this case. The six older hives all had older, dark comb and the new hives had mostly new, white comb (except for a few I swapped). 75% of the survivors were in the new hives, but keep in mind that the chimneying was seen in all of them and the survivors were ones I fed in time. Maybe they were smaller, being from splits, and so, did not eat through their stores on top as quickly?
I agree that bees really seem to prefer older comb, and I rarely destroy it. I know the recommended strategy is to change out comb every few years, but I don’t use commercial miticides in my hives, so, while disease organisms might build up, I don’t think contamination is an issue, except for what the bees bring in from the outside, of course.
Did not mean to imply that you implied ventilation was an issue. I was just noting for the record that the hives have good ventilation. I think you raise a really good point WRT granulated honey. Maybe this was something of a perfect storm? Hives split and building/rebuilding, poor summer flow, robbing (all stressful to the bees), lots of fall honey, which granulates, and dry winter conditions in the hive, making utilization of the granulated honey difficult or impossible. Just a theory, but makes sense to me, as it explains why things were so different last year as compared to years past, when I used pretty much the same management technique.
Will be checking my hives more frequently going into the fall. I try to stay out of them as much as possible to minimize the disturbance, but I think that this year I need to do some better monitoring. Thanks, everyone, for all the great advice!
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Bill
Claremont, NH
+43.35687 +43° 21’ 25”
-72.3835 -72° 23’ 01”
CWOP: D5065
Weather Underground: KNHCLARE3
HonetBeeNet: NH001
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