Heat, humidity, weddings, golf, Phillies, and vegetable gardening seem to have made this summer fly by. Somehow, I just wasn't motivated to add to this blog until now, but that can happen to the best of us.
As I've told a number of people, nothing much has been going on with the bees that seemed worth reporting. They have survived the summer fairly well. There are plenty of bees in both hives. They have small hive beetles, but supposedly a strong hive can manage with them.
The porch hive was producing an enormous number of bees, so many that they were weighing down the screen on the bottom to the point where they were escaping onto the porch where they had no where to go. I would take a screen out occasionally and let them out, but that wasn't enough, so I added a second layer of screen. That didn't work either, so I closed the bottom "lid", which has taken care of the problem.
I thought it would help with ventilation to have it open, but it doesn't seem to matter. The bees handle their temperature - they've had a lot of experience. When it's too hot, you see a lot of them outside around the entrance. I thought that was the case in the June post, and I'm sure of it. Still no idea how they decide who stays outside.
They have stabilized as far as the amount of comb; I haven't had to add any more bars. You can see honey in some of the cells, but it's not full by any means. Current strategy is to keep an eye on them and think about feeding.
The yard hive is also doing well in spite of my concerns because it has been so wet. This is much more of a problem for bees the heat. I wanted to close the bottom lid, but there's a mound of bees on the screen, for some reason. I would have to don the bee suit to brush them off and close it, but it's been too hot to do that. At some point I will.
I was concerned for a while last month so I fed them a few times. They sucked it right up. Since then, they have been on their own.
Honey
I've been asked a lot about when I'll get some honey. My plan has always been to get them through the winter and then see how it goes. After reflecting a while, I realized that honey is not my main purpose is raising them. The whole process of learning about beekeeping and raising them has really been primary. My approach is mostly to let them go and see what happens. I've heard and read a lot about that, but I want to see for myself. This means I will almost certainly not take the general advice about replacing the queen after a year or two to keep the hive productive. If the queen weakens, the bees are supposed to be able to replace her. I will probably leave it to them to work that out.
That's where I'm at. I'll post again when there's something to say.
