Danny really enjoying your work - mentioned last week that you are a few weeks ahead of me so it's really interesting seeing your inspections it helps me out no end. One thing that I have started doing is when checking and replacing frames I close them up together so when you finish you can push them all back as one or in groups without the danger of squashing. Your Bees are lovely and calm probably helped by your calm approach.
Ahh thank you so much, really appreciated and this is one of the reasons iv done this and will continue to do this to hopefully help others as im a beginner too, lots more to come though out the year with splits and so on…👍
You say you are intending to split in August after the bees have made you a little honey. Perfect plan. However, the bees may have other ideas and my personal rule of thumb is to split once there are eggs laid in those play cups. Maybe if there is only one egg in one cup I will remove it - but if on the next inspection there are several eggs in several cups I will take the bees lead and split the boxes. Hopefully on that inspection the queen is found in the top box and the box can easily be removed and placed on the second stand. Then I don't damage the queen cups with eggs in and put those frames with 'charged' queen cups carefully into the bottom box and put the outside frames from the bottom box into the top box with the queen. Hopefully your bees are not going to lay eggs in queen cups - ie want to swarm - before the end of July. But you know what they say 'the best laid plans'.
Ahh yeah hopefully they don’t lay eggs but yes definitely will do a split if I find they are charged .. One of the reasons I do make sure every 5/7 days I go and do my inspections just to keep an eye on what they are doing as they made a lot more play cups this time around… Always look forward to your advice you give me really appreciated and so glad you watch my videos..👍🐝
It's funny Danny, puts a smile on my face. Bees aren't half coming on pal! The difference to your last video is unreal! The amount of honey in the second brood box is unbelievable. Are you considering doing a split yet? (You might mention it further on in the video, I'm only 20 minutes in.)
Yeah the second brood box is so heavy with the amount going on and yeah the honey init is unbelievable and really appreciative of you watching.. I will do 2x splits around August time, one into the hive to the left and 1 into a nuc box I have, plan is to build this as big and as strong as I can with hopefully a little honey for myself too.. They should be plenty on the frames I use to move over into the others … Good strong colonies to go into the winter is what’s needed and let’s not forget end of year wasps wonting the honey inside my hive and it being as strong as it is they shouldn’t have any chance of gettting any lol ..👍
