Combined Hive

Saturday I helped Doug Shaw install a package. Honeybees are becoming hard to get. I attribute this more to increased demand than anything else, although Doug and I have both lost colonies. His new package seemed to take well.

Then we headed over to Clarence Brown's to finish the process of combining the colonies there. It was a simple task. We took off the upper super that had the bees from the hive in my yard and set it to the side. The bees in the top super had managed to store a fair amount of honey. They had access to the syrup in the top feeder and evidently worked diligently on it.

I pulled some of the frames from the super I had removed and replaced totally empty frames from the middle super (the one that I kept with the hive) so that there was more honey for them to build from. I looked again Sunday at the super I had removed. The bees hadn't robbed any of it yet, so I will need to inspect again.

We also inspected the brood box, saw the queen and that there was brood a couple of days away from hatching. It's still a small colony, but active. The combining worked and I think the hive will produce this year.