Saturday, August 29, 2009

Is this okay?

What is the deal with the sugar water lately?! They are sucking down a liter in a single evening. If I put it out after work, it is gone when I get up in the morning. They are also a bit more hostel. I feel the need to gear up to simply change the sugar water. Today, it has been 6 days since I added the new hive body IN BETWEEN the old hive body and honey super. I checked the new hive body. There was a decent amount of bees on it but they weren't doing anything with it. No comb buildup and certainly no eggs or larvae. You might guess they were simply traversing it to cap the honey in the super I moved it (as it was mostly capped).

I didn't get into the main hive body as I was trying not to disturb them too much. OKAY, it did do one thing: I robbed on half of a frame of the capped honey. We just got a taste of it last time and were left wanting! This time, I got plenty! We ate until we were sick of it (which didn't take as long as we thought it would). This was the good peach orchard honey! Anyone know if this is considered MUCH worse than pulling the supers at harvest time? I scrapped one side of a super frame with my hive tool and put it back dripping honey. I also sprinkled powered sugar on the new hive body hoping to attract them into that section more as well as pay them back for the honey (no hard feelings?)

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