The Flow Is On! - Checking in on the Bees

The flow in south Louisiana in our area is dependent primarily on the Chinese Tallow Tree.  The flow means that the tallow tree (and other plants) are producing lots of nectar.  The busy bees gather it, bring it back home and make delicious honey.  The tassels you see below are the flowers of the tallow tree from which the honeybees harvest nectar.

Here's an up close shot.  There were bees really working it, but I couldn't capture them as I was far away zooming in.

As semi-novice beekeepers, we've learned that when the flow is on, you don't want them to run out of room to put the nectar.  We check the boxes every week, adding honey supers to give them more space.  A super simply means a box placed on top. Here are our hives.  You'll notice that there are five.  Last week we had six.  I'll explain that in a minute.  Let's go through the boxes one by one.

The first box is a swarm we caught in the yard this spring.  You'll notice the brick is sideways.  That, in beekeeper language, means we could find no queen.  I did, however, find some larva, and that means there WAS a queen.  I'm going to give it one more week.  If I find no queen and no eggs, I will stack this deep on top of a healthy hive and they'll be able to use the nectar in these frames.

This second box is a swarm we caught this spring.  It's blowing and going.  In fact, I added a honey super to the super that was already there, because the first super was about 80% full of capped honey.  One thing you'll note is there are 2 deep boxes.  The reason for that is that one of the splits that we made failed.  No queen and no eggs.  I stacked the deep on top of the existing deep and put the queen excluder so that the queen won't go up into the honey supers.

The third hive is VERY active.  I added another honey super on top of the four honey supers already on there that are full.  We're really happy with this one!

This is the sad story we were telling you about.  One of the splits that we made, although initially successful, failed.  Rather than lose the nectar, we moved the deep box with the bees and put it on top of the second hives' deep box.  They'll use all that.

The fourth hive is doing well.  I didn't add a honey super to the top of the three existing supers as the top one wasn't quite full.  We'll check again this week.  One thing to think about when adding supers is this:  When we pulled honey last July, we put the supers with drawn comb in the freezer.  Using supers with drawn comb gives the bees a head start.  If they don't have to draw out the wax, they spend more of their energy making honey.  Supers with foundation only (meaning no drawn comb) requires the bees to build out the honey comb first before making honey.

The last hive is the swarm we caught at the farm.  These are "mean" bees.  When you pull the lid off, they are in your face, angry.  It is important to always wear your bee suit.  The good thing is that mean bees make more honey.  We added a new honey super to the top as the one beneath it was almost full.  This super was a new one with foundation only - no drawn comb.  It will take them a while to build out the comb.  They have about a month and a week before we pull honey.

Temperatures are in the 90's already and it is humid.  Even though ventilated, it is hot inside a bee suit.  Handling the boxes with angry bees flying around is tricky.  Honey is heavy!  A medium super with ten frames full of capped honey weighs about 50 pounds and when they are stacked high, are hard to lift and maneuver.  When we pull honey in July when the flow is over, it will be a hard job, but there are fruits to the labor: Delicious, healthy, raw honey!