Hi Emily,
As Roger said, you are doing things right you just had a bad experience.
Hang in there!
With hindsight, when you harvested the supers you took away an awful lot of
hanging around space and really crowded your bees. In addition, you may
now be in a period between flows with the goldenrod and aster not yet
started. So, you have a lot of bees that are hot and crowded and can t find
any work to do!
Presumably you first gently put smoke into the front entrance; a few puffs
will do. About a minute later, perhaps you lifted up the outer cover and
put a few puffs of smoke in there. Then waited another minute (or 30
seconds, it is not critical), took the outer cover off and put a couple of
puffs right in the hole of the inner cover. Then, and only then, you pried
up the back edge of the top deep and put a couple of puffs between the
deeps. Right? If not, try it. Smoke, used properly, is wonderful.
I just put on my Apistan strips today. I don t lift the deep, but only tip
it up so it is resting on the front on top of the hive body below. Then I
insert the strips and put the deep back down. Saves an awful lot of
lifting, and the bees don t mind.
As Aaron said, put on the strips. While not recommended, you d be far
better off to skip the Fumidil and Terra than to skip the strips.
Take these lessons in stride, as painful as they are. If beekeeping were
easy, it wouldn't t be so wonderful!
Lloyd
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Owner, Ross Rounds the finest in comb honey production.
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