> It is a beautiful winter picture of hives consisting of mostly 3 and 4
> brood supers with open wholes in them. Are those holes for ventilation?
Yes, they provide ventilation in winter, and an entrance year round. I can
also assess how the hives are doing by the activity at the holes.
> Do you always keep them open? Do you ever close them?
I normally keep them open, and normally, I would not have so many brood
boxes on.
My goal is to not produce honey, but rather to split the hives when ever
they got strong enough.
The problem was that it got too late for splitting, and the hives needed
more boxes, so I kept piling them on. I finally gave up and used some
supers, too. I don't know why the hives did so well, but I did feed 15%
pollen patties all summer, and we had a long fall. They made 90 lbs each in
the last month.
I plan to take the extra boxes away and winter in two or three, but am
having problems, since the bees are still occupying as many as five boxes in
some hives and the weather is getting cold for chasing bees down.
Normally, when I use supers, which do not have holes, for the top boxes, the
bees retreat to the bottom several boxes quite early, but it seems the holes
are keeping the bees up in the top boxes. They stay up to guard, I suppose.
Also that is dark comb up there.
It is an interesting problem. All the smart beekeepers I know just chased
the bees down a month ago, fed, medicated and wrapped -- and are now
planning their winter vacation. I still have supers on. Brood boxes, at
least.
I think I may have to winter in five or bite the bullet and chase the bees
down. I have several very good blowers, and it is easy to just blow the
bees directly down into the broods from the top. if the ground is too cold
and the days to cool for normal blowing.
I'd prefer to reduce the number of boxes because I want to use oxalic
drizzle and I am not sure how to do it in five boxes. I laid one hive down
after taking the top box off (with bees) to see if I could take the bottom
boxes, (see today's diary) but they are down there, too! I managed to lift
it back up, but those four boxes must weigh 200 lbs. One way to drizzle the
bottom box is to roll the hive upside down, but with four boxes, I don't
think this will work.
Anyhow, this is probably more than anyone wanted to know.
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