Today I inspected both hives for the first time this year. There was alot of activity, so taking pictures was out of the question this time.
Hive Abernathy is somewhat weak right now, but they made it through the winter and with some luck they will get stronger soon. Some brood, but not much. Honey stores okay too, but not much. On the agenda for my next inspection for this hive:
1) Inspect to make sure I didn't kill the queen. Had problems while doing sugar shake and may have hurt/killed her...or upset them to the point that they killed her out of disruption.
2)Determine what to do about the fact that the deep is empty. Either wait for them to move down or convert to mediums completely for this hive.
Will probably try to move to deep so I can combine medium/shallow brood configuration to deep box and get rid of the shallow super since I have mostly deeps and mediums.
As for the Nienhaus hive...it is absolutely boiling over. Alot of over crowding, but didn't see swarm cells.
1)Need to convert to deep/medium and get rid of the shallow on this hive too.
2)Need to inspect that queen is still laying.
3) Inspect that they are working the empty frames I placed today (2/24/08).
Do another sugar shake on both hives.
In the meantime, need to feed both and put together new equipment for this spring.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
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