I executed the beekeeping plan, only to have a couple of things turn out differently than I had planned. First, there were three frames full of capped brood in the box that was supposed to be devoid of any brood. Second, most of the honey in that box was not capped and therefore not adequately cured.
We did extract honey from one of the brood frames, because the caps had ripped off and it was a mess, but we left the other two frames with brood alone. We extracted honey from the other frames, a little less than a gallon.
I put the box in the bottom position of the swarm hive and put the extracted honey on top of the hive inside a top feeder. It rained a bit in the evening, so I put the fume board on top of it, just slightly askew so the bees could enter and exit but so that it wouldn't get washed out. (I assumed the fumes had all disappeared by that time.) When I checked back, the honey was all gone, so I presume the bees from both hives robbed it and I will get it back if I end up harvesting this year.
I ended up needing two fewer boxes. The frames in the brood box I had placed on when the bees swarmed was not drawn even a little bit. There was a super that had new frames that were modestly drawn, but just barely. Both have come home with me.
No comments:
Post a Comment