Well my bees beat me up these last two weeks. To be fair though it was mostly my fault. So, I started with radix hives; two at coastal Merewether and two on my property near Paterson.
Obviously the Merewether hives produced through winter and with a bit of an up-change in the weather they needed space for brood and honey. This caught me out (Lesson 1: don't procrastinate or aim to do the least amount of work. In other words don't be lazy.) I then had to rush around buying and assembling frames. Penders Bees reported that from their orders it's a bumper season. But I really need to not be so unprepared again.
Adding Supers and extracting helped create space, but I'll be extracting again very soon with my spanking new machine. Unfortunately in hive #4 the Queen spent the winter above the Excluder and it really knocked them about. Removing the Excluder (which was a third full of dead Drones) got them working ok again.
An emergent issue was the prevalenceI of cranky bees. I assumed (Note lesson "don't assume"), this was due to the mess and congestion in #4 but yesterday I realised its not them and that the aggro was from #1" and/or #2. So, when I opened #1 they went off bumping and stinging. I never helped the situation with my swatting a Stinger like a mad man. Well he was on my thigh and it smarted, a lot. But this only made them mad. (Lesson 2: Don't swat bees. Lesson 3: don't wear holey jeans. ) So we got of on the wrong foot. I'm still hoping with; space, no excluders and time* they will settle down. (*The current mob will be replaced in a few weeks.)
The farm hives, I *assumed* (try not to do this with bees), were low on productivity. They were new last autumn and looked pretty average going into winter. But no! They fake swarmed late last week there are indications of space issues resulting from good productivity. So they will need; Excluders removed and Extracting done pronto.
Post Script:
I wrote the last passage Lee's thank an hour before #6 swarmed. Huh. I was shooting myself because i had frames but no boxes.
Anyway, I opened #6 and found a few things; 1) low numbers, 2) plenty of space in the Super. 3) 3 Q cells.
As the current Q had left, I destroyed 2 Q Cells and left one to replace the Old Queen. I removed the Excluder, because I don't trust them anymore. While I was working on #5, the Swarm returned.
#5 was fantastic my observations were; 1) but comb in the top, 2) Super three quarters full, 3) no Q cells.
So I; 1) extracted 2 frames only because my new Extractor was so unstable it needs work before resuming. 2) removed Burr Comb, 3) removed Excluder.
Most interesting today, in #6 I thought I heard the Q beeping. There were several distinct trills, which was a first for me. It may have been as the Swarm returned?
Reference from Google:
"Piping are the sounds made by a mated queen or a virgin queen (an recently emerged, unmated queen). The urgent high-pitched buzzings are like a battle cry to any other queen bees in the hive. The queens who are still in queen cells will respond with short buzzing called quacking".
Today was a good day; learned a lot, heard the Queen singing, got honey, and got no Stings.
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