I decided to put another hive body on both hives today. I suppose they could be called supers but I wouldn't mind if the queens were to lay in them. I didn't put an excluder on either hive, so the queens are welcome to move up if they'd like.
In Droogie 1, which you can see in the video below, the bees had drawn out nearly all the frames in the second hive body, and the lower body is also full. Most of the second hive body is filled with lots of capped honey and nectar, with a few frames having brood in the center. The super I added has foundationless frames as well as some frames where I installed wireless wax foundation. I moved two drawn frames filled with nectar and capped honey up to the super, and replaced the feeder. I may stop feeding after this week, but I want to make sure they are able to continue to draw comb.
Here is the video of the inspection. You can see some of the bees fanning on top of the frames.
It is clear that the hive started on foundationless frames (Droogie 1) is doing much better at drawing frames and expanding than the hive started on traditional wired foundation. Although I cannot attribute this solely to the difference in foundation, I'm going to use foundationless frames from now on. They are so much easier to prepare and the bees seem to love them.
No comments:
Post a Comment