The weather had rained 4-1/2" early this month. We then had the next week in the low 90's. Quite the swing in temperature you know. I live in Texas, so it's pretty much normal to have spikes of extreme weather for short periods of time.
Bees are doing very well. Wintered nicely in the warmer then usual temperatures. The bees were out about 100 to 200 yds flying around. I don't think many actually left further then that as we had bees all over the property. Not bothersome, but just hanging around. Sometime during the week I would feed a bottle of sugar water. Just did it for my entertainment I suppose. Massive amount of bees you could imagine.
January I was able to purchase my 2 VHS queens from California. Arrival on the 13th of April. 23 days to go. I am counting the days because I have rather aggressive bees. 1 hive is Africanized hybrids unfortunately. That's from the cut out I did. I purchased 3 frames of drone for queen breeding. Hoping to raise queens and sell them, so flooding the area with the VHS drones I would really like that. Calm the bees down in the area.
Early Feb I made a Nuc box that is queenless. I am making comb basically with them is all my goal is. I keep dumping some nurse bees in and a frame of brood when I can. The bees decided to fill the gap where I pulled a frame for the Nuc Box and didn't replace that frame. Now if I could only get the bees to do that in the brood box. For whatever reason the queen only has 5 frames drawn out in the brood chamber.
I made about 50 frames and a few more that were mediums. Made a few bee boxes too. I opted to take the honey box off the bee hive 2 (Africanized Hybrids), but they eventually just robbed it, so I put it back on. I just started a new bee hive with the honey box, but that was a fail. It was next to the bee hive is why. Oh well. I just left a new box with frames on if the bees wanted to make a new bee hive.
The bees are bringing in lots of pollen and nectar currently with all the wildflowers in bloom. We have a normal spring it appears. Bit dryer then usual and not raining inbetween dry spells frequently enough. Were having high winds as usual in spring time with 15 to 25MPH winds. I open and reduce the entrances when needed. We had a few nights of freezing weather over the weekend. Amazing the Texas weather we get. Just when you think Winter is over we get a cold front.
Here is a comical moment. Again I have mean bees, I wasn't suited up this AM.
Bee management is something we all try to do and stay on top of. We can only manipulate and guide the bee colonies. The bees know more then we do and more they know what's up. I'm nearly coming out of my first winter. It was a very mild winter with only a few nights that crept as low as 27 degrees that I can remember. I can't really recall an arctic air mass moving down and it getting super cold or staying prolonged cold.
I expected to go into Spring with the bee hives having only gone through half the honey in the 2 boxes I had for them. It's about 1/3rd and I speculate that as I didn't weigh the boxes, but do know that the bees had very heavy honey boxes going into winter. I did a tremendous amount of feeding trying to get the bees built up with comb and the numbers healthy in 2015. We had a drought and it was so severe that we didn't even have a nector flow meaning very little flowers bloomed in the fall. I remember going in to parts of the end of summer and feeding and I didn't feel as though I had to. I am glad that I did because I didn't even know what to have for winter time.
Since mid January I have fed a bottle of 1:1 sugar water a week. Sometimes it was 2. I opened the bee hives in Mid January and did see capped brood. Spotty brood pattern, but none the less it was the opportunity for the colony to generate some bees for the spring time. Upon closing up the bee hive I noted that a lot of bees were dead on the ground over the next 2 days. No panic, it's just the stress of going into the bee hive. Warmer days above 50 the bees could be seen flying about. I knew what was going on. Old bees I stressed them and they died.
Mid January I ordered my 2 VHS queens from California. This is in light of having to do this because I have too aggressive of bees for temperament. I call 1 hive suspected Africanized bees. Call them hybrids if it makes you feel better it doesn't change the bees temperament. I had a guy comment on that to me and just left it at "Thank You". I know what I am dealing with and have the responsibility of managment of both bee hives. Queen arrival is April 13th mid week. Hope I can find both queens in the bee hives.
That last question is something to address. If I can not find the queens then what? I get to have 2 Nuc boxes with new queens and in a later date I will search until I can find the queen. Bee hive 1 qn goes into a Nuc Box and Queen in bee hive 2 goes into a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Of coarse I am going to remain confident that I can infact find the queens. I will pull the queens on Sunday with help. Here is to good weather that week.
We do have a few trees/plants and shrubs flowering, so the bees are bringing in pollen. What is pollen for bees? They put pollen in the baskets on the legs. 2 pouches. I don't know how they do it, I suppose rubbing the legs 1 on the other as they walk on the flowers. Bees use the pollen to feed to the larvae as protein. No pollen no brood can grow from what I have researched. So, bees that are brining in pollen means the queen is probably laying gang busters.
Mid Feb I did a split into a Nuc Box. I did this to have them draw out comb on drone frames that I purchased. They did not draw out drone comb though. I need drawn out drone comb for when my queens arrive I plan to graft queen cells.
Today I wanted to see how the Nuc Box was doing. I wanted to put a frame of brood inside it too from beehive 1. So I removed the honey box and pulled a few frames and found 1 frame. I put it in the Nuc Box and looked at the frames inside to see if the Nuc frames were being drawn out. No they were not. Just before I closed everything up I wanted to look at the honey stores in the 1st bee hive. I opened the inner cover and it had a full drawn comb where I had removed a frame previously for the Nuc Box and did not replace that space with an empty frame. This meant that I had to get a frame and attach it to a frame and put it back. The comb wouldn't fit in a medium frame, so I had to then get a Super frame. I have medium frames for honey though, so this meant that I would have to take the honey box off to place it in the deep brood box. Replace the honey box and then add another box for honey since they're drawing wax comb. Now, thinking back I should have just placed the deep frame into the Nuc Box cause it's a deep. I will open up the brood box next week and see how they attached the comb to the frame and straighten it out. Probably will just put it in the Nuc Box.
