Ok ladies and gentlemen, here is your chance to help out a
beginner with some really good advice gleaned form all your
years of experience.  (buttered up yet?)
Here goes.
I started 5 hives this year, 3 from package bees and 2 from
swarms I caught.  The packages came around the 1st of May,
and caught the swarms around the same time.  One of the
colonies with bought bees seemed to outgrow the single hive
body rather quickly, started hanging out on the outside of
the hive most of the time.  Once I saw that this was not an
isolated occurrence, I quickly added another hive body.
I checked the frames in the original body, and all but the
outside ones were drawn out with plenty of activity.  After
the addition of the 2nd body, the number of bees on the
outside diminished somewhat, but there have always been
several on the outside, day and night.  Now it is getting to
the point that the entire front and sides of the 2 bodies are
covered with bees at night, several inches thick in places.  I did not
put on any supers this year, intending for the bees to keep
plenty of stores for winter.  I will be checking inside this
hive next weekend (today is this Labor Day).  What should I
look for inside to try to determine why they are hanging
outside?  Should I put together another body for in case
these 2 are full?  Should I rotate the 2 bodies?  Or should I
just leave it alone and be happy I have plenty of bees?
The other colonies seem to be doing ok, one has a few bees
hanging on the outside all the time, but nothing like the
other one.
2 of my hives I never got around to putting the 2nd body on.
In your opinion, should I go ahead and put another body on
now in hopes that they can fill it in time for winter, should
I combine the two into 1 to increase the chances of winter
survival, or should I leave them alone?
I have seen some bees carrying other bees away from the hive
area (couldn't tell which hive) and drop them on the ground.
Inspecting the dropped bees revealed that some of them have
deformed wings.  I suppose they were being discarded as
defective.  Could this deformation be due to mite
infestation?  I have Apistan strips ready to put in.  What
should I look for while I have the hives open?
I live in a rural area in the Southern quarter of Illinois,
if that tells you anything you need to know about my
climate/weather conditions.
I have tried to include details that might be important,
would be happy to add anything I forgot at request.
By the way, I have only a Juno E-Mail account, no Internet
access, so please do not suggest that I should visit so and
so web page, I can't.
I am in search of a portable modem at least 9600 baud that
will connect to the serial or printer port of my aging laptop
(Memorex Telex 386 sx yes I know it's getting pretty long in
the tooth, but I like it) so I can check my E-Mail while on
the road.  Needs to get it's power from the port.  Any ideas?
Thanx in advance for your support.
 
Les Vaughn
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